The baby's alive.... Yeah!

Sometimes you wonder if your baby is still alive inside of your belly because you don't look like you're pregnant, nausea went away and the doctor didn't hear the heartbeat for two visits. What can you do though, only to wait to have the ultrasound. But the waiting could be frustrating :)

Yeah, we were both kinda nervous (especially me) for the first ultrasound this morning. When we first saw the little thing moving around on the screen, we were too happy to say anything except holding each other tighter and tighter. Only till today, I knew for sure that there's a baby inside of me and it's alive :)

Baby's heartbeat is around 175 per min, and it's only a little bit more than an inch long. I'm actually only 9 weeks and 4 days pregnant, and the due day is March 26th. Here's our little baby :


I'm a little bit disappointed that we aren't going to have a twin though :)

Big Beautiful Muffins

Big Beautiful Muffins, from America's Test Kitchen

These muffins were so good. I made little happy noises with every bite. Thank you Sharon and America's Test Kitchen!!

Green Card

Today Sharon officially got approved for a green card!

This morning Sharon and I went down to the local United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office at 8:00 and had an interview to seal the deal. This was the culmination of many months of applications, waiting, and other frustrations. The purpose of the interview is basically for the government to determine whether or not the applicant's marriage to the American citizen was genuine or merely an attempt to cheat the system and obtain residency. They asked us questions about how we met, our jobs, our marriage, etc, and require documentation such as bank statements or leases to prove joint assets. She also asked to see pictures of our wedding, and when we showed her she immediately said, "Oh, OK now I'm satisfied. I was under the impression you got married in the courthouse", and that was the end of the interview.

Sharon can now come and go in America as she pleases, get cheaper tuition at UA, as well as other benefits. But, since we were recently married, we have to file another form in two years with proof we are still together or she will get deported.
They aren't going to remind us, so hopefully we don't forget!


Overall I would say the process for this was an extreme pain but still better than expected. We have filled out about 7 lengthy forms, made many many phone calls to the national USCIS hotline, made many visits to the USCIS field office downtown, needed tax returns for three years for me, Sharon, and my parents, needed certified translations of Sharon's birth cerftificate, certified copies of our marriage certificate, fees of about 1300 dollars, lots of other stuff (at the interview all our paperwork was there, it was in a stack over an inch tall) and all with the overriding fear that one mistake might invalidate our whole application and leave us in the dust. In the end, however, I would say it went fairly smoothely. They received our application in mid February, and the whole process was finished mid August. 6 months isn't bad for government processing, I suppose.


With that worry over, we just hope the baby develops properly and healthily! (For those who didn't know, Sharon's pregnant).

Ignorance in Health Care

While I cannot claim I am fully up-to-date with the debate on health care reform, I think I can claim with reasonable surety that most other people are not, either. After reading 7 or 8 recent news articles about it, I still feel somewhat in the dark. The issue is convoluted and disorganized. I really liked this NPR article which discusses the disorganized chaos of it all, pointing out that the millions and millions of young people who were so vigorous in supporting Obama on the web and streets are now nowhere to be found; the article sarcastically remarks about many of those pro-Obama young people: "The diss on you was always that you were infatuated with Obama's charisma and with vague notions of "change"—not with the long slog of political engagement. That isn't true, though, is it?"

In reality, most young people are ignorant about this issue because they are under their parent's policy and thus don't care. In all honesty, it's only because I got married and we are expecting a baby that the hard reality that life and especially health care are expensive dawned upon me.

But you know what? Most older people are ignorant about it, too. Why? They get insurance through their job. It has been surprisingly difficult to assess what kind of premium is reasonable to pay in insuring a young couple expecting their first child. When I ask around, almost everyone has no idea what their health insurance premiums really are because the costs are hidden behind work benefits. To me, this is the obvious problem about our health care system. When the majority of insured Americans have never done their research about what policy with what coverage is economically sensible for them and their family, it makes sense health care is broken. If the kind of car Americans drove was similarly a packaged benefit of their job, would be see the variety that we do today? We don't let someone else decide what kind of car we drive or what kind of car insurance we get; why do we let someone else decide what kind of health insurance to have?

To me the problem is that health care is not functioning like a capitalistic free market nor is it functioning like the socialist government run systems in Europe. Instead, it is somewhere in between. In socialism, people let the government do a lot of thinking for them, but now people are letting their employers do the same. With the government squeezing in on one half of health care and most of America being force fed the other half by their jobs to the point where all creativity, awareness, and competition has stagnated to nothing.

Any thoughts?

China!!

So we're back from China! It was an awesome trip. Without being able to access blogs or facebook for a month because of the Chinese Firewall, it's kind of hard to put our entire trip in one blog entry. Luckily, inspiration from Alison and Brandon's Europe videos helped me realize a picture video made by Picasa just might do the trick. Enjoy!