what sleep deprivation can make you do.

This morning, as I was distractedly pouring out a bowl of cereal, some peripheral portion of my conscious brain (which was very very tired, I should add) noticed that the milk poured out with a "blot" sound.

Or maybe it was a "blurp." I am not in a position to be able to say definitively.

Regardless, that distant portion of my mind that registered this information filed it away for future use. And then the rest of me started to eat the cereal.

Let's just say that the milk had not actually frozen. And let's just say that the expiration date on the carton had lied.

And let's just say that I didn't eat breakfast this morning, and close the curtains on what was really a painful chapter in my morning.

Hobbes's first Halloween

Hobbes as a fuzzy bear.

There really is no limit to how cruel a parent can be to a child. Case in point. While we didn't actually have any commitments for Halloween -- The Guy was working, and really the sprog is far too small to be interested in or have any investment in cruising the neighborhood for candy -- I chose to dress him up anyway, in a costume that (it turns out) was a few sizes too big for him.

This did not noticeably dim my enthusiasm for turning him into a great big lint ball of fun.

I have to say that he took the affront to his dignity with far more grace than I would have expected, doing little more than casting one look of burning reproach at his giggling mother before turning his attention to a concentrated effort to gum his way out of his new outfit. I took a few hasty photographs before setting him loose; lack of teeth aside, Hobbes has a ferocious grip with those tiny jaws, and I didn't particularly look forward to explaining to The Guy why his son was flopping about the house with a dead bear skin irretrievably trapped in his mandibles.

(calvin and...)

Pregnancy was almost disappointingly tame; I did not have complete strangers patting my stomach, nor did I experience encroaching personal comments about my looks or disapproving of my diet. I had heard stories from friends who have gone through pregnancy. By comparison, mine was a cakewalk.

It is possible people fear me. I like to think so, anyway. Do not disillusion me.

Mundane questions though, I did get. I think the most frequently asked question, just under the popular one of, "What are you having?" (after a while, I started answering, "Liposuction," just for the hell of it) was: "What are you going to name him?"

And after we came up with the name and started sharing it with people, the third most frequently asked question became, "You're kidding, right?"

Eventually I stopped telling people.

Naming a child is not the easiest thing in the world, and for whatever reason, it was harder when we discovered we were going to have a boy. Options for girls were abundant and pleasing, but options for boys proved surprisingly difficult; beyond knowing that we wanted a Japanese name and a non-Japanese name -- Japanese names tending to be rather long and complicated for your average American or Brit to take in -- we had considered almost no options when the ultrasound technician finally told us what we'd be having. The Japanese name option we'd left up to Mom, trusting her to come up with a list of options that we could eventually pick through. The sticking point was the (for lack of a better word) "non-ethnic" name.

"Richard."

"No. I knew someone named Richard I hated."

"Kenneth."

"No. I knew someone named Kenneth who was a complete dick."

It's a natural instinct to want to name your child something that doesn't have any baggage associated with it. Unpleasant memories, bad associations -- the thing with growing up as a boy in England like the Guy did, the thing with growing up as a small, Asian boy in racist England, the thing with growing up as a small, Asian, frequently bullied, opinionated and bull-headed boy in racist England, let's say, is that for every 'normal' name out there, you will have met someone with that name who either:

1. bullied you
   
2. teased you
   
3. was a dick to you
   
4. hated you
   
5. you bullied
   
6. you teased
   
7. you were a dick to
   
8. you hated.

"Michael."

"No."

"Kevin."

"No."

Venturing beyond the range of traditional names went no better. Silicon Valley has an eclectic population from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, and chances are that there's an asshole out there with that name. No number of nice people with that same name can overcome the one jackass who also lays claim to it.

"Kale."

"No."

To make matters worse, many of the less commonplace names have been co-opted by females. 'Morgan,' for instance; once a stalwart male name, it has become associated with the yellow-haired daughters of soccer moms. Once a name goes chick, it does not go back.

Apparently, there is a long-standing rule that in any naming endeavor, the male half of the spawning pair will invariably enrage the female half by offering completely ludicrous suggestions for the future name of his son/daughter and heir/ess.

"How about Obediah?" he asked.

"No."

"Methuselah?"

"No."

"Jebediah?"

"No. Oh my God. Shut up."

"I'm trying to help," the Guy said insincerely.

He wasn't.

The name Hobbes came about one day as we were driving down Stevens Creek Boulevard to -- who remembers where, now. I had taken to reading street signs and random words off of advertisements and stores as we passed them, plucking anything that might be a possible name for consideration. "I am not naming my son Tantau," he said flatly, after my suggestions started getting increasingly hysterical. "Are you serious?"

"No."

"How about Gustav?" he asked, along the lines of not being serious at all. "I know a really good guy named Gustav."

There was a short silence while I contemplated a small, round-headed, lippy (because he would be our son) Asian boy growing up with a name like Gustav.

"The books suggest we consider fictional characters and role models we like," I said, by way of diversion.

"Like?"

"You like Linus Torvalds," I suggested, without enthusiasm.

"You like Neil Gaiman."

I brightened. "How about--?"

"No."

Stymied, I thought back to all the fictional characters I liked. Darth Vader seemed a little too much baggage for a child to carry. Elizabeth seemed inappropriately girlish. Dantes seemed destined for misspellings and frustrations. I liked Opus the Penguin, but given my musical background, it seemed kind of kitschy. Of course, I also liked Calvin and-- "How about Hobbes?" I asked, facetiously.

There was another short pause. "Okay," said the Guy.

"What?"

"Okay."

"Are you serious?"

"It's not bad," the Guy conceded. "I could live with Hobbes."

I gnawed my lip. On the one hand, Hobbes. On the other hand -- we had not been particularly successful at coming up with anything that we both agreed on. "I'll add it to the list," I said weakly, and made a mental note.

List of possible names:

1. Hobbes.

It was a short list.

Over the course of several more weeks, we returned to the subject at sporadic intervals, attacking it sidelong like ducks tackling a piece of bread too large to take in with one bite. We added more names, some of them so Wonder Bread white that they could've been used to make sandwiches for the Ku Klux Klan. Parker, for instance, which got knocked off the list after a few unconvinced days. Marcus -- after Marcus Aurelius and a really outstanding role model who happens to be friends with the family -- was another one that fared better, but was eventually moved to second place when we discovered it was one of the most popular names.

Friends were not a great deal of help. "Have you named Baby Teriyaki yet?" asked one of the Guy's friends. His suggestions made the rounds through every haphazard Japanese word he knew. "How's Baby Ninja today? Gosh, baby Nunchucks has gotten big." My friends were not much better. "Starscream!" one insisted, while another argued for, "Megatron!"

"You people do not get to help name the baby," I said.

"Splinter!"

"No! Starscream!"

"Shut up."

And the longer it took, the more Hobbes grew on us.

Reactions when we tentatively agreed to go with Hobbes were mixed. Some people thought it was great. Other people looked at us blankly as though their secret conviction that we would be terrible parents was proving itself before the child was even born.

"Are you naming him after the philosopher?" asked Tara, reserving judgment.

"There's a what?" I asked. It's a terrible thing, when public education fails us.

It took us a few days to look Thomas Hobbes up on Wikipedia, during which time we established that most of my friends assumed we were naming him after the philosopher, and that most of the Guy's friends assumed the cartoon tiger. It seemed fairly clear to us that my friends had a more optimistic view of our class and education.

As it turned out, there was nothing in Hobbes's philosophies -- as Wikipedia presented them, anyway -- that would cause us to change our minds. A further revelation, that the cartoon tiger was actually named after the philosopher, reconciled both parties. And it grew on people. Not everyone, perhaps, but as the initial appalled shock wore off, people admitted it actually worked, given the kind of people we are. They were kind enough not to elaborate further. "He could be a skater or a doctor with that name," one of the Guy's friends said. "It could belong to anybody."

"It's a bad-ass name," one of my friends noted.

"...but Starscream would have been cooler," another added.

"Shut up."

By comparison, the first name excited far less comment. "Your kid is going to have a hard time with forms," experienced parents told us. We acknowledged this was so.

The "yoshi" of Kazuyoshi's name comes from my father's name, Yoshihiko, and the characters in kanji work out to be, I think, harmony and righteousness. The name itself can be broken down to several short forms: Kazu, Kaz, Yoshi, Yoshi -- and the diminutive, Yo'chan. There are a dozen different ways for the boy to define himself when he grows old enough to care.

In the meantime, I hate to admit, we still call him Filbert.

jaundice and the yellow man

The child was born with jaundice, which is caused by a buildup of bilirubin in the bloodstream. The outward sign of this is -- get this -- yellow skin.

My question is, if one is Asian, isn't one yellow anyway?