Life is good!!!
Another glorious sunrise with the Bears! Wakeup call was 5 a.m. today, and it was worth it. What a thrill to see the great city of Chicago celebrate like that. Wow. I think I could hear the cheers from here. I'm holding baby Anne as I speak, and thinking of all my family and friends in Chi-town. At its heart, Chicago is truly a Bears town. Interestingly, this vindicates the Chicago Sun Times, which took some heat for putting palm trees next to their logo rather early in the season -- symbolizing a trip to Miami and the Super Bowl for the Bears. And, although I don't want to take too much credit for this, when the Saints were about to kick a field goal that would have given them a 17-16 lead, I put on my Walter Payton jersey. The Saints missed the kick, and the Bears outscored them 23-0 the rest of the way. Yes, yes, yes ...

Did you know you can eat cereal from a saucher plate?
I may buy the kid's food and clothes, but my 2-year-old calls the shots -- let there be no doubt.
This morning, I poured him a bowl of cereal. Alas, he didn't like the bowl. So, I let him choose which bowl he wanted. He chose a tiny blue saucer. Then, he INSISTED on keeping all of the cereal from the original bowl. So, I poured in on the plate, then coated the cereal with some milk on the tiny plate. Guess what? It worked.

Yes!
It's 6:22 a.m. on Monday morning and I've been up for three hours. Why? Well, watching the Bears-Seahawks game of course. The TV picture was great, but the game was in Korean so I listened to it on the radio through the Internet -- 30 second delay. Weird. But the Bears won, so it was all worth it. Time to get some sleep.

Sleepless in Seoul

So, I know what I'm supposed to be doing. Gushing over the new baby, cooing every minute, enjoying this amazing experience.
Here's what's really going on: Baby Anne keeps us up half the night, because for her day is the time to sleep and night is the time to eat. And stare and eat and stare and get changed and eat and keep the parents up. Especially mom, the provider of food. That makes mom and dad very cranky.
Then there's Jack, who is severely bent out of shape because he is not getting absolutely 100 percent of the attention that he received before the birth of little baby Anne. That has taken the form of him scribbling all over the living room floor, the TV and his bedroom in crayon. It has also taken the form of him screaming "NO!!!" at the top of his lungs, at times, to simple requests such as "Do you want me to read Mother Goose?"
The right reaction: smile, gently prod him to calm down and encourage him to express his feelings
My reaction: Fight, fight, fight the animal-like urge to wring his neck.
Did I mention being a little cranky :)?

The first photo was taken in central Seoul, on a cold early January night.
The other photos show baby Anne and Jack, and baby Anne with her only great grandmother, who came to visit us today.

About two blocks from our newspaper's office, in central Seoul