Romantic dates with your partner?

Before Fabrice and I were married, we went out often, our dates were usually random and unplanned.  We would go out several nights per week, mostly just for dinners.  If it's weekend, we would complete our dates with additional trips to movie theaters.  Occasionally, we also drove out of the city for some rock climbing, river canoeing, and hill hiking.

One Saturday morning, I woke up feeling an urge of getting out of the lab for a change.  So I suggested Fabrice to drive out of town.  He asked, "Where to?".  I said, "I don't know.  As long as it is not the lab!".  Then, we went to San Antonio (we lived in Houston then), visited the Alamo, took a cruise to enjoy the River Walk, spent a few hours wandering from one local store to another to experience being a tourist and to understand why so many people consider this city tourist worthy.  We even spent a night there just for the night life along the River Walk!  Next morning, I woke up depressed because I did not want our fun trip to end.  Then I suggested Fabrice to take a detour back to Houston via Austin.  He must have thought I was more worthy of his time, so he went along with the "unplanned plan".  So, there we were, visited the capital of Texas, stumbled in a finest French restaurant in the downtown area for lunch, and then completely lost ourselves on the streets.  While walking randomly on UT-Austin campus, we noticed a stream of people: they all nicely dressed walking towards one direction.  Curiously I followed them, Fabrice followed me, eventually, we all arrived a theater.  It was already quite late and Fabrice wanted to head back but I insisted to check out what show was on.  He and I looked at the bulletin and could not decide what to do - the ticket was very pricy and our unplanned trip already took longer than intended.  Our responsibility started to take over our curiosity by then.  It was then, we were approached by a group of people.  They told us the show was something one should not miss.  Best of all, they made decision for us by offering us a free ticket.  So with mixed feelings, Fabrice and I bought another ticket.  When we went in, the theater was already packed with people, a first sign of a good show, we thought.  Even then we still decided to stay on the back in case we needed to leave early if the show turned out to be was not worth of our time.  Pleasantly surprised however, that was absolutely the best Contemporary/Modern Dance Performances and the Concussion Music that I have ever watched/heard!  It was a night to remember.

The whole trip was a date to remember!

After we got married, especially after we had kids, our life becomes highly predictable: we now own a Toyato Rav4 and then my little new green beetle retires.  Our driving routes have changed from all over the city to home-daycare-work-home on weekdays and home-Costco-home on weekends.

We don't even shop for food in various grocery stores anymore.  We also have completely forgotten how to have a date with each other.

One day at about 8 months after I became a mother, I had made a major discovery: we were not an isolated case.  So I decided to make our married life a bit more fun.  Married couple should not be deprived from loving and fun dates!  I told Fabrice, "Let's ditch the kid and get out for a date." He looked at me as if he saw a pretty young girl, "Really, when?"  The poor husband of mine was clearly excited.  He must have been happy to find that I was willing to leave our infant with someone else - I was a new mother at 46 for the first time, can you blame me for not willing to separate with our lovely Zhuzhu?  Poor Fabrice, his weakness is too understanding of others.

So I asked Ling to babysit Zhuzhu for a whole night - from 6 pm to 11 pm, we said to her.  Fabrice and I had planned to have a real date, which should have included a good meal in a fine restaurant followed by a good movie.

The moment that we walked out of the door, however, I wanted to turn back - I could barely keep my eyes open.  All I wanted was to have a good sleep.  But that was our first night out for fun ever since the kiddo was born, I could not ruin it by telling Fabrice that.  So, I stuck with our original plan.  Our meal was a bit rushed though, because I was too afraid of falling my head down to the table.  Seriously, I almost did fall in asleep!  Interestingly, Fabric was not much more excited than I either!  So he finished his meal without any delay.  We acted like we only wanted a sequence of events involved in the concept of date to end, as quickly as possible.  We should have stopped right then, without a movie.  But we had planed to watch a movie, so we continued to go on our date.  When we made it to the nearest movie theater, both Fabrice and I looked at the bulletin boards and then each other.  Almost simultaneously, we said, "Let's go home."

Ling laughed her ass off when she saw us coming back home before 9 pm.

Second dates - staff night out nights.

First let me give you some background. Apparently, we, Fabrice and I, not the only ones who understand the problem that married couple don't have much time for each other.  Our employer does too.  To solve it, our employer provides us "staff-nights-out" nights.  In those nights, we can simply drop our kids to a "night care".  A bunch of college students then babysit them for us.  We can then have our dates for free from 6-11 pm!

On the first staff-night-out night, Fabrice and I ended up going back to our offices - he continued working and I visited my favorite blog sites.

The second time I went shopping with Ling while Fabrice was out of town.

Those, my friend, are what I call romantic evenings.

Pathetic, don't you think so?

Well, not really, if you know that Fabrice and I have our offices on the same floor.  His office is about 20 meters from mine and we lunch together almost daily.  Compared to other couples, what we need more may be alone date, except we do wish to go out for good meals without kids, from time to time.

At the last staff-night-out night, we decided to do something different.  We have recently had a lot of changes in life.  One of which was that we have moved to a new house.  I am having a love and hate relationship with it, even though its noticeably bigger and nicer.

At around 5 pm, Fabrice walked in my office and asked, "So, what we are going to do for our date tonight?" - it usually irritates me whenever he asks this type of question - it's his job to provide ideas to have fun: he picks up movies from Netflix, he choses places to go for skiing, rocks to climb, routes to run, restaurants to dine (ok, I contribute to the last one too)... For the man readers out there, never ask your woman what to do on your dates - it's the man's job to find fun things to do with the woman!

Anyway, back to our romantic dates.

"Why don't we go to have our house cleaned!" - I still love our old house that we moved out slowly but never get it completely cleaned.  I hate to leave it unattended even though no one is living in it at the moment.

Fabrice was disappointed but he could not find any better things to do.  But he suggested to at least get some food first.  Then we found every single restaurant close by our old house was full, even the bad ones.

Eventually, Fabrice and I cleaned our house with empty stomach!

What do you do with your spouse of 10 years?

Home alone, again! - the last love story

I've finally figured out why I am more productive when the hubby is out of town: I must have been trying to impress him so that he comes back home with heightened appreciation of me as his super wife and kids' supermom. All these years, I might have been under appreciated, who knew!

Ever since we met, I thought that I had the upper hand, especially given that I am 10 years older therefore 10 years wiser, right?

Fabrice and I met at work in year 2000. He came from France for a supposedly short postdoctoral training - he had a 2-year fellowship grant so he planed to head back his home country as soon as the grant-funded period would end, which also means that he did not intend to develop special bonding with me or anyone else in the U.S..

At the first sight, we did not even like each other. He thought that I was too loud and I thought he was too witty, by too witty I mean his sense of humor was too European. So love at first sight did not happen between us. One day, after "knowing" me for 1.5 years, he came to ask me where he could find a Chinese bamboo steamer, I told him in China Town. Of course I also offered to take him there the following weekend - I know, who would pass the opportunity to get to know a handsome guy like him, even though that required me to put up with his Europeanness. We got a bamboo streamer, some Chinese groceries, and spices. Acting as his local guide granted me a dinner in his apartment and also defined the turning point of our relationship. After dinner, he asked to kiss me. He said he liked me the moment when I sat down in his passenger seat with my two legs folded like a typical Chinese. I said, "No, it would be easier if you'd asked me to sleep here." I did not stay with him that night, but I moved in only few weeks after that.

Few months after that, he moved into my apartment since his apartment was emptied twice, first by burglars and second by flood/Storm Allison.

The following summer, after 6 months into our dating life, Fabrice took me to France. That was the first time that I visited France, with a bonus of having a local guide and lover, triple exciting. We stayed in Dijon with Pierre, one of the two Fabrice's childhood best friends. While Pierre and I were left alone -Fabrice had a short conference to attend in the U.K. - he told me quite a few Fabrice's romantic stories, introduced me 3 (!!!) Fabrice's ex-girlfriends, and as if these were not discouraging enough, he even said to me, "Fabrice's would never get married."

With all the newly acquired knowledge, I decided to play along. I did not expect to the relationship going anywhere anyway, I was just using Fabrice to get over Theo, I thought to myself. After Fabrice came back from U.K., the 3 of us did everything that the boys loved to do: caving, rock climbing, canyoning, hiking, partying, drinking... (no group sex, I know what you are thinking!) While I could feel that Fabrice then was in love with me, I was in doubt about our future until that nigh after the party with Fabrice's friends in Dijon:

One of the 3 ex-girlfriends of Fabrice (he later explained that she was not his exGF, I blame Perrier for this) flirted a whole night long. I was right there, and I could not speak French, but that did stop them. Eventually, I left the 2 "love birds" alone since I felt more and more in their way. Fabrice did not come after me but Perrier did. He was more attentive than Fabrice, either because he felt sorry for me or because he felt dutiful as he was used to being my translator by then. After the party, I kept quiet in order to draw Fabrice's attention so that he would realize his wrong doing and then would apologize to me.

But he fell in asleep faster than a narcoleptic dog. I felt like being abandoned in that foreign land. I felt sad and extremely lonely, and it had been long time that I had not felt that way.

So I got up to make my early return to the U.S. arrangements. An hour or so later (it must be about 3 am), Fabrice and Perrier found me in a phone booth close to Perrier's apartment. It was then I confessed that I was jealous and I was no longer a free spirit.

So, I started my trap to get him.

First step, I asked Fabrice for a ring as a Christmas gift, "Why a ring?" he was not expecting that, because I told him many times that I did not intend to get married, especially to him, because he was 10 years younger and he was a French (who can trust French, they love everyone, right?). "Oh, don't worry, I have not changed my mind. I like to wear rings and it's just a ring, not a marriage proposal." I answered.

He probably was not convinced by my answer but bought me a ring soon after I asked for it. It's a cute one with the world's tiniest diamond on it. He got it from France. Perfect, he was in!

Second step, I asked him to go for a summer vacation with me and I suggested us to go Hawaii. He said what about other interesting spots other than a tourists flooded Hawaii. I told him Hawaii was nice and sure enough, we spent wonderful 11 days in Maui! Until today, we both often refer that trip was our honeymoon. So, he was in the trap deeper!

Third step, I made him stay in the U.S.. When our relationship became more and more serious, we started to imagine where we could live together after we finished our postdoctoral fellowship. He said, Canada, Australia, U.K., Holland, Switzerland, even Denmark. I said, "Honey, U.S. is the only country that I would consider." Since then, he never left the U.S..

Fourth step, I asked him to marry me. In 2004, after living together long enough, I said to him, "I think you should meet my father now. He has to know who I am living with." He said, "Yes, let's go to China." "Remember my father is old and he does not like it if he knew that you and I are not married. So, I am going to tell him that we are married. Otherwise, he will put you in another room." Well, what waited for Fabrice in China was a wedding - Chinese style, completely arranged by Bing, my older brother. The second morning after we arrived China, Fabrice and I were sent to the photo studio to get our "Wedding" photos taken. The 2 of us spent a whole day changing costumes, being put on make ups, and fighting for the jetlags. And that same night, about 100 people (family members and school friends of mine) showed up at the big wedding reception banquet. One month after that, we got our legal marriage license because I told him that we should not lie about our marriage to my Chinese people.

Last step, I asked him to give me a couple of kids. And now we had Mia/Zhuzhu and Remy/Niuniu.

Life has been happily ever after, indeed.

I know that I was indecent and calculating. But a girl has to do what a girl had to do.

But things becoming out of my hands lately. I am losing power after living in this happy life for the last 7 years. Fabrice is now formally my boss, both at work and at home. The worst of all, I did not even realize that until today, after I spent a whole night trying to cut Niuniu's hair while he was sleeping!

"Niuniu needs a hair cut." Fabrice said to me few days ago. "Good luck with that." I said. I had already tried few times before but Niuniu's answer was consistently no. Then the day before Fabrice left for Washington, he said, "Niuniu said he would let you cut his hair now." I immediately put our lovely son in front of the mirror by sitting him on the edge of the sink like last time. He screamed and I let him go.

Tonight, in the middle of my rewriting "tiger mother blog" (BTW, I deleted the most of it by accident!) after tucked the kids in bed, I received an email from Fabrice. He said, "Good news, I will be back in Town tomorrow 9 am." WTF, that would be a whole day earlier! My plan changed at once. Instead of writing, I went to get comb and scissors - I needed to cut Niuniu's hair before Fabrice's coming back home. The damn kid woke up each time I tried, so a 20-min haircut has become a 4-hour one.

Well, Niuniu has his haircut finished and I have this blog written: "One stone killed 2 birds," as we Chinese like to say.

Wow, I am a pushover, what a discovery!

Birth story II

At the time that I became pregnant for the second time (or third time), I was relatively more relaxed and confident. I was able to sleep better than the last time. Given this, I started to make a perfect birth plan at the end of the baby incubation process. I wanted do-over natural birth. I even had chiropractic care to have the baby turned from breech to head down position so that I could give birth all by myself. Since my pragmatic husband did not seem to be the fan of any birth plan, I started to look into hiring my own supporter - a doula. After few interviews, I ditched the idea since I realized what I truly wanted was my mother. Yet I could not have her since she had rested in heaven for many years now. So, eventually I settled down and compromised to have my father, who came here a month ago from China to wait for the birth of his grandson, to be the supporter.

At 9 pm on January 29th of 2009, while emptying my bladder, I found that I could not wipe off the residue urine, it kept coming! It was sticky! It was transparent! And it was VERY STICKY! What the hell was that? I shouted loud to my hubby Fabrice who was getting ready to bed. As expected, he could not care less since this is the man who would not show any emotions unless someone just died here. "Could I be losing the mucus plug?" I suspected. A half of a roll of toilet paper later, I was still trying to clean off these transparent and sticky streaks of secretion. After continued failing, I decided to clean it with hot water shower. Yet after the shower, the liquid still kept coming and I could not stop it. Now I had no doubt that my water was leaking, again, just like the last time! Since I experienced the exact same thing about 2 years ago and I was determined to stick with my perfect birth plan, I was calm. Then I walked to the bed to report Fabrice this news. It was 5 days prior to my son's due day. Knowing how much I wanted a natural birth, he agreed to my "wait and see" strategy. It was not a big flow anyways. So, I went to bed at 11:30 pm with a thick period pad. At 3:00 am, I was woken up by a gush of liquid coming out of my vagina, I was then at high state of mind and could not go back to sleep any more. I got out of the bed to avoid further loss of the precious water. I was not willing to inform the hospital to avoid repeating the last birth story. To pass time, I turned on the computer and started to read birth stories of other women about their wonderful and jealous-inducing VBACs (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). In between those stories, I also tried to get some work done since there were few deadlines to meet, such as some paper reviews. At 6 am, ZhuZhu woke up and I told her that daddy would drop her to the daycare today. Mommy would need to stay home. She was understandably nodding her head as if she knew that Mommy would have a big day ahead!

However, contractions did not develop into regular ones quickly. I was disappointed. I absolutely did not want to be induced again like the last time. I then went out to have a walk. At the front patio, I found my father doing his morning exercise. He was surprised to see me in PJ. "Why aren't you going to work today?" he asked. I said flat out but calmly, "Because the baby is coming." He was not prepared for this news, "Oh, are you okay? Are you in any pain? No, how do you know the baby is coming? Why aren't you go to the hospital? Is Fabrice coming right back after dropping off Mia to take you to the hospital?..." He was now completely overwhelmed by the possibility that the baby could just drop out to the floor any minute. "It will take a while for his coming and I will keep close attention to his movements. No worries!" I tried to calm him and myself down. "I am going to have a walk, would you come with me?!" I asked him. He happily followed my lead and the two of us walked, miles after miles. What I did not tell him was that my water already broke and I was secretly counting the frequency of my slight contractions. One hour passed, no labor; 2 hours passed, still no sign of labor...

At 11:30 am, Fabrice came back from work and said it's time to check me in. I said, "They will again just induce the labor." I refused to go with him. Looking into my eyes, he knew that I would not change my mind. "You should at least call the ob's office" He said. I then made the important phone call. "What, your water broke 15 hours ago?" The receiving nurse this time did not seem to doubt my judgement and she asked me to come to the office immediately!

At 2:30 pm, Tammy, the very nice RN who I had seen twice recently at weekly check ups confirmed the water was broke. I was admitted into the Labor and Delivery directly.

In the hospital birthing room, I was monitored with the blood pressure, baby’s heart beating rate, and contraction status. As I suspected, no regular pattern of contractions, still. Out of desperation, I started to perform the acupressure that I learnt from Dr. Google to induce labor, but no help. My ob, Dr. S, then suggested not to prolong it any longer. "We would use tiny amount of pitocin to initiate the active labor," he said. Seeing me with no intention to accept his generous offer, he added,“The water had been broke for quite some time now, we really need to take some action to prevent complications.” But somehow he did not rush me into this. At 7:30 pm, I was starving and had some cake that my best friend Ling brought me behind the nurse's back. Ling was on the way to replace Fabrice who was then at home feeding ZhuZhu. She also came to bring back some news to my father who was anxiously waiting at home.

Being the sane one between the two of us, Fabrice asked me not to insist on the “natural” plan. At 10:30 pm, I finally caved in. By then, I had a new nurse Helen and new ob Dr. R. "Why have not I met you before?" I asked Dr. R while Helen was injecting and adjusting the dose of pitocin. (The tone of mine must have been accusatory. In order not feeling like strangers to each other, every pregnant woman is given the chance to meet every ob in my ob/gyn's office in a rotating manner at end of the pregnancy. Since my ob/gyn's office has 5~6 obs who take turns to be at the hospital to deliver babies each day.) Dr. R seemed to be very attentive and understanding, which was the opposite of my own ob Dr. S who delivered ZhuZhu and he definitely scared me! "Oh, maybe I am scheduled to see you at this week's check up?" He answered dutifully. "I only came here about a month ago from K state." He added. True, it was still 4 days prior to my due day and I could have just happened to have missed my last check up to meet Dr. R. before the baby decided to kick my water bag wall! Nurse Helen then told me that she would stop the pitocin once a regular contraction pattern was established and my body would take over at that point to produce oxytocin. At 12:30 am, the contractions started to become regular, like once in every 5 min. The pitocin was started at 1 mU/15 min – meaning every 15 min, it was increased 1 mU. At 7 mU, 1 hour and 45 min from the start of induction, my contraction still did not reach the goal of every 2~3 min/contraction so they kept pumping more pitocin into my system...

The rest of the birth story became fuzzy since the contractions started to hurt like hell before I even reached 4 cm dilation. I was fighting but failed. I begged for epidural so that I would not have to cry in front of people. Following the epidural, both Fabrice and I fell into deep sleep and by the time I remembered that I had a birth to give, it was like noon next day! What, what just happened? Was the baby in the womb even alive?! I did not remember seeing anyone other than Fabrice sleeping beside me.

At 4 pm or so, I began to believe that VBAC was not the best for the baby. The longer I waited, the more drugs they would pump into me and the baby. I said to Dr. R at his last check up, "Could you please tell me that a Cesarean is not that scary" He said, "No, it's not that bad." Obviously he knew I was ready to let the dream of a natural birth go. He then told me that my contractions were good and the baby seemed to be doing alright, but my cervix refused to open further than 4 cm! He did not believe another 2 hours would make any progress. "But one never knows" he said. At that point, I found myself became anxious to meet our dear son. "Okay, let's get him out now!" I willingly announced. I could feel the whole room suddenly lightened up by all the smiling faces of Fabrice, the nurse, Dr. R, even two anesthesiologists who magically showed up. As I really liked Dr. R and I did not intend to wait for the next random ob to deliver our son. We then went over the details of C-section and I made Dr. R and the anesthesiologists promise me no gaging and no stapling this time.

There, I was sent to OR and a brief Ceasarean was performed smoothly. Either they had been exceptionally good or overdosed me, I had no memory about the C-section part. Although months after that we met the attentive anesthesiologist at cafeteria and Fabrice was thanking him, which kind of reminded me he was standing by me the whole time and watched and monitored the whole process patiently...

The only thing that I did remember was what came from the mouth of the proud father, "I think we have gotten ourselves a very smart little fellow!" Somehow Remy was born with his eyes open and even made an eye contact with his Daddy already right after birth. Fabrice, the man who had never bragged about any of his achievements in life made this statement on the very day of Remy's birth. Seeing my jaw was dropping, he added, "Trust me, his eyes can talk!"

Do you think nurse Helen pumpped some of that pitocin into the Daddy by accident?

“Done! Our baby boy was born on January 31st at 5:46 pm by C-section, following 24h of unsuccessful contractions. The mommy has been great and is in a good shape as well as the baby. He is quite big, 9 pounds and 89 ounces, 54 cm, and full of hair. That's a man already...Nobody cares about the daddy on this occasion but I'm doing quite well too, thanks you..." Fabrice's email was out few minutes after.

After meeting Remy, I realized that he could have never made it out naturally anyways. He has a head size of an earth - he was practically a head with 4 tiny limbs and there was no way that head of him could have passed my petite pelvic opening!

My do-over birth story repeated the last one almost identically, except that I was not sad nor disappointed about c-section this time around. In fact, I wish I had made a Cesarean birth plan at begin with, which would have saved so much trouble and my NiuNiu would have not been drugged by the pitocin and excess epidural!