More Pictures!

While the grandparents were in town for a week, we took a lot of pictures of both kids. Here is a collection of them.  Some are pretty good, and some are so so, I tried not to show the bad ones here. It is fun to look at these pictures now and try to remember the emotional feelings we had when we were taking these pictures.

Grandparents are coming!

Before the end of the first week after Steven got home, Nana and Grandpa flew in from Boston to “help” their daughter and son-in-law. This was the first time they met Steven, but they were already very familiar with Pan-pan. We had several sessions of taking pictures. It was certainly a very nice get-together with the Grand's for a whole week. Even Grandpa enjoyed holding Steven several times during the visit. Pan-pan certainly had many, many stories read to her. From the moment we picked them up at the airport to the time we took them back to fly home, we certainly had a very great visit. It was nice to see that Grandpa was getting more relaxed with our whole family!

Relaxed and at Home

It did not take long for Steven to feel relaxed after getting home. From the start, he was very different from Pan-pan. He ate his food gradually and without rush, he was patient but serious. You could sense the  different personality just from feeding alone. The picture below seemed to reflect his nature just right! It doesn’t matter whether you like your personality or not, a certain amount of your character is derived from your ancestors.  Steven’s general manner came mainly from Janice, and maybe my father. While Pan-pan’s general personality trend comes from me or my mother. It is always a combination!

Coming Home!

Coming home is taken for granted as part of the procedure after a new  birth. On the second day, when I went to pick up Janice and Steven, to bring them home from the hospital, I was told that Steven would need to stay a bit longer. Janice had noticed that he had some jaundice, a term which was new to me (although a nurse thought that Steven should look that way since he was part “yellow”). The doctor agreed and told us that a few days under the florescent light would taken care of the problem. So Steven was placed under the light and Janice had to come home without him, which was tough for her to do. it was very difficult for her in the next couple of days. Below is the picture under the “light”.

Finally, Steven came home, and we were all ready for him!

Steven came to join us in a hurry!

All was going smoothly for Janice’s pregnancy. The weather in May and June in Lexington, KY, was mild and comfortable. Since the UK medical school hospital was the best there, and I was a faculty member at UK, it was natural for us to use the facility there. When we went to the hospital that important day, the main doctor came to check on Janice and told her that it was going to be a few hours before she would deliver. Since he was scheduled to receive an award that night, he told Janice that he would go there and came back to take care of her afterwards. I decided to go pick up Pan-pan from our neighbor’s home and take her to McDonald’s to get something to eat, and then come back to welcome the baby’s arrival. Before I got to the main hall door, Janice called me to stop, as she felt that the baby was coming more quickly than anyone had expected. While I was alarming the delivery room nurses, and an orderly was wheeling Janice to the delivery room, the baby was in such a big hurry that before we reached the delivery room he was already out. The nurse cleaned him quickly and let me take this picture in the hallway. I believe that the nurse still had some form for me to sign in her hand! We had decided on possible names for the baby ahead of time – depending upon whether it was a boy or a girl. We now knew that the “baby” was in fact Steven Henry Huang – a boy!

Later we took a few more pictures in the delivery room:

Of course, all my plans to take a complete sequence of the arrival were wiped out!

President Delos P. Culp

Dr. Culp was the President of East Tennessee State University when I went to interview for the Assistant Professor position in the Chemistry Department, in the spring of 1971. Generally, a president does not even know that the University needs an assistant professor in any department. But D. P. Culp was different. I was told that he would sometimes play a part in new faculty recruitment when he had the time. I was summoned to his office for a few minutes during my interview.  Certainly I was impressed. However, as I look back now, I think that the reason he wanted to meet me was to make sure that he could understand my spoken English. I later learned that some departments had hired faculty members whose English was not very understandable. He just wanted to make sure that this criterion was carried out properly. I truly appreciate his effort.

I was offered another job!

In January 1971, Dr. D. G. Nicholson, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at East Tennessee State University, called me out of the blue and offered me a job to teach at ETSU. He said that the Department had lost a Physical Chemist, Dr. Ralston I believe, because of his illness. Dr. Nicholson wanted me to take that position (there was no affirmative action rule at that time). He also told me that the job was to be mine until May, 1971, as the Department had to make a decision then to make sure someone would be on board in the Fall of 1971. I told Janice about the offer. However, since I was not looking for a new job and I was happy with the present position, while I was honored to be remembered by the former Chairman of the Department, I soon forgot about the offer and continued my best working schedule. 

What I did not realize was that Janice was not all that happy with her situation. She was not part of the “faculty wives” because she was teaching part time and was not interested in serving “tea” with well polished silver utensils. There seemed to be some interest gaps between her and the other women. I was so busy that my involvement in our daily life as a family was diminishing more and more. She did not like the trend. So when I was called again by Nicholson around Pan-pans birthday time, she urged me to take the interview invitation and make a trip to a place south of Lexington, KY. Remember that she had told me earlier that Kentucky was as far south as she wanted to live!

April in East Tennessee is as beautiful as any where in the USA! There was just no more discussion necessary and we decided that we would accept the offer to come back to East Tennessee. It was a big surprise for the University, just as it was a big surprise for us. You thought that you were settled and you had bought a house which you had lived in for less than a year. You took in several graduate students. You had just accepted a grant to purchase your needed equipment and you had just built a vacuum line for your new projects. And now you are going to move - very soon, in fact that Fall!!! How quickly your situation could change!

The decision to accept the offer was a key factor in determining our family life, my career, and everything that happened in the future. It was at the time not a very difficult one - we let our gut feelings guide our decision. That turned out to be the primary way we made many major decisions in our lives, good or bad. It has worked just fine for us!

A Shift in Our Attention!

Yes, our life changed more than we expected in the spring of 1971. While Pan-pan continued to be the center of our attention, my new job, my new research projects, and my new external grants demanded naturally a certain amount of time and effort. In addition, Janice had started a new part time teaching position at nearby Georgetown College in the Math Department. So, this was a very busy time in our individual lives, as well as in our married life together.

Further, and most importantly, Janice was pregnant with our second child. We did not want our children to be too far apart, age wise. Janice was already quite big that spring and Pan-pan certainly began to realize that some one else was soon going to be demanding our attention. See picture below:

Spring, 1971

Pan-pan was definitely becoming a little girl in the spring of 1971. Life changes continuously. While you are taking for granted that you have reached a certain stage, before it becomes stabilized you have already changed into another stage.  I suppose that is the reason very few truly understand their situation and only realize it afterwards. I was then very busy at the University. Janice was the one dealing with Pan-pan day in and day out. During that spring she was also pregnant with another child. Our lives were very different. I am not at all sure that I had any feeing about her life then, until I look at some of the pictures I took of Pan-pan at that time. See below.

Third Birthday!

When you have your second birthday party, it is really your third birthday! People who truly consider that life starts at conception  should use the Chinese way of counting to describe how old you are. Somehow, Western people prefer to seem one year younger than they would be in China! The pictures below were taken in our first house for Pan-pan’s second birthday party. (She would have been three in China!) The young man in front is Jeffrey Able, the son of our neighbors, Joyce and Lindsey.

Pan-pan's first encounter with Snow!

In the winter of 1970, Pan-pan had her first experience with this white stuff, She was intrigued by its texture, its temperature, and even the color. She played with it and did not want to come in. It was so much fun!

Visitors from Sandusky, OH

Pan-pan’s Godparents came from Sandusky ,Ohio, to our new home in Lexington, Kentucky, for a visit. Ginger and Bill had been our very close friends since graduate school days at Illinois. We had continued to visit each other after they relocated to Ohio. We were certainly happy to have them in our new “house”. It was very nice to see them relaxing at our home, reading some stories for Pan-pan.