Sunday, October 29, 2006

Baby En's First Balloon...


I have always wanted to buy En a helium balloon, and just as well that this balloon came along with Baby En's gift from Sharon and PH, and it kept En occupied for quite some time trying to catch the floating balloon...

Well, for one, it expanded his vocab - now he knows what is a balloon and I have been trying to get him to walk in order to grab the balloon.. yeah, incentive and bribery.. anything to help Baby En walk more steadily...

Baby En's Birthday Bash.. Remains of the Cake







The left was supposed to be Baby En's Birthday cake.. Well as there were soo many people that day, what we have are more like post-event pictures..

Next is what remains of the cake... well, not too sure whether En really enjoyed his birthday since he was crying and clingy most of the time with people milling around..

He was only back to his own self when the party winded down with only half of the party left.. think he really hates crowd and no matter how much socialising we did with him, he only likes intimate small crowd.. It is not so much strangers per se, its lots of strangers that he does not like.. haha.. but well... at least we enjoy the cake immensely.. it is indeed money well spent :)

Friday, October 20, 2006

Parenting - What does it really mean?

To quote my fav satirical playwright, Oscar Wilde,

"Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them." It is a scary thought...

Recently I have been embroiled in several heated "debates" on what being a parent really means, and what it means to nurture and look after a child.. and what it means to be the primary care-giver of Baby En...

No doubt, the opinions out there are as varied as you can get.. but long before En came along, as I watch some of others' kids, and observed how some parents at work, I have already formed my own opinions of how I envisage my kids will be nurtured and taken care of.. but if I am wrong, will my kids love me less, will i sufffer their judgement, worst, can they forgive me?

Well, in my view, there are some marked differences in parenting style and beliefs.. and could be led by the generational difference or divide..

- The functional care -giver: those who look after the kids' physical growth needs, quite the basic care to ensure kids eat and grow well.. but less of the developmental and emotional bonding as they feel that schools and teachers and time will teach these "knowledge" to the kids..

Classic lines: "You better listen to what the teacher say in school huh, or I will cane you" or. ." Aiya, why your kid so skinny, mine is well taken care of, see so chubby"

- The Go by Book Nurturer - these new age parents lap up all the parenting books, internalise them and spit them out wholesale for the kids. They drive themselves nuts bending in every way to make sure all aspects of the kids are well taken care of (fr. the physical diet to the emotional and psychological aspects). As they are such gurus, they tend to insist child are brough up in their way...

Classic lines: "The book recommends no caning of my kid..." or "i practise XXXX's diet plan"

The thing is whichever style we are, there may not be right or wrong way about it.. every generational has the "in" parenting way..

The drill and cane were very much part and parcel of my generation when i was growing up.. comparing kids' size were a norm.. Today, no cane policy and an abundance of reasoning are the flavors of the day.. and comparing kids' emotional EQ is the competition amongst mums..

Assuming that is the case, then what happens when you have funtional primary care givers from the by-gone era? Can they be good primary care-givers for my kids and to equip them with values and skills for the world which my kids will grow up in?

I was told that the by gone era care givers do not mean any harm to the kid, that their motivation is also to love and develop the kids, albeit their manifestations are different from the modern parents..

Am I the child in Wilde's quote - i grow up loving my parents, when I have kids, I judge my parents.. and if they do not adopt my parenting style, I find it hard to forgive them.. Does it have to come to that? Is this not one of the many problems modern parents face..

How do we deal with the anchronistic manifestation of parenting from care-givers of the by-gone era? If we do not grant them the care-giver status, are we denying their rights to their grand children? If i give in and let them do the anachronistic form of parenting to my kids, am I compromising the well-being of the kids?

These mind-boggling questions continue to be mind boggling .. and the steamy debates seem destine to continue for quite some time .. after all.. there may not be an easy right or wrong answer to this, that i strongly suspect..


Friday, October 13, 2006

What's Your Best Feature?


A rare pic of Baby En sleeping - since I can't take pics of him sleeping in the night, the few rare sleeping pics were taken during the day & on days when he napped long and deeply enough..

Sleeping pics are good for looking at the baby En closely without interference - interference in the form of his roving eyes, his cheeky or frowning expressions.. so i feel they give a more representative feel of his face.. and if I want to assess what i think his best feature is - sleeping pics are the best..

And not sure how many of you will agree, but I love En's eyelashes best - they are dark and really long, enough to make many gals jealous, including me, and they fringe his eyes so nicely.. and the best thing abt eye lashes is that they are sooo Subtle, many told us how they love En's eyes and that they are his best feature.. but to me, it is the subtle quiet eye lashes that captivate me..

I also happen to think that men with long eye lashes are really sexy.. maybe En's future girlfriend ll think so too.. Don't ask where the lashes come from, yes, cuz both daddy and mummy have adequately long and dark lashes :) truly.. Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

En in a Boxz...


The number of En's toys have grown such that it has warranted getting a HUGE box to keep them all.. well, it also serve to train him in digging for his choice of toys and hopefully, keeping his own toys..!!

Yet, before we place all his toys in them, I simply cannot resist placing him IN the box - hahaha! Quite a Good fit ya?! hekhek.. Posted by Picasa

Thursday, October 05, 2006

i Miss Your Smiles...
















Ode to En's Endearing Smiles

"Oh, Baby En, what has gotten you so down
And have you looking so glum now
Come, put us under your magic spell
With your toothy, enchanting smiles!!"

En has been one grumpy baby recently, as he tries to cope with the change of domestic helper in our household...

He shows his likes and dislikes obviously, and when he does not want to come home with papa from the nanny's place, we know something is very wrong..

We are quite hands on parents, even with the helper helping out with En, I will feed him his solid meals while hubby will bath him on weekends.. every night en and I will play hide and seek around the bedroom till he is ready to go to bed..

The helper is the one who can coax him to drink his milk and plays with him while we get ready for work in the morning.. and he really likes the previous helper over the new one...

Am keeping my fingers crossed that he will get along with the new helper soon.. I always think that baby and young kids need stability.. not that we should shelter them so much that they become weak in adapting to changes, but at their tender age, changes bring about much anxiety and insecurities that they may find difficult to cope with..

These days En is more often spotted with a grumpy face and I miss his spontaneous cherubic smiles so much!! He never fails to greet us with his smiles every day and I am really heartbroken that he looks so glum these day...

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

What Does A Birthday Mean?


Here's Baby En's Mug shot at 11 months plus..

Now that we are counting down to Baby En's First Year birthday, suddenly I find myself asking what does the word "birthday" means..

Well, according to

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:
birthday (noun) = the day that is exactly a year or the number of days after a person was born

Merriam-Webster provided 2 meaning:
1. the day of a person's birth
2. the anniversary of a birth

If a birthday only signifies the number of days that have passed, it seems so clinical and scientific, to me, it does not have any of the emtional values when we scream, party and toast to "Happy Birthday".. So really what does a birthday mean?

Merriam-Webster's second definition is a bit closer to what i have been thinking about..
To me, I dun think I am gonna celebrate Baby En's birthday per se, I see it as celebrating OUR First Anniversary, a year that we have spent together.. and the numerous memories and events that we have shared together.. the amount of time that we have spent together, and those are the stuff worth celebrating - The journey that we have travelled together for the past year is worth marking and celebrating..

So in about 20 days time, it will be our One year anniversary with Baby En, by the time he is 1 year old, it will be a celebration of the amount of precious memories acccumulated with Baby En in our lives.. and for this, I will look forward t0 celebrating many future anniversaries with Baby En as they signify the abundance of memories we have jointly shared together..

Many cheers to Baby En and us!!

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Happily Married To be Better Parents!


" We often focus on (material) things and take people for granted, it should have been the other way round. We should focus on people and take (material) things for granted..."

"No one can gurantee you that a marriage can last, ... only you can provide the guarantee that your love will last..."

"(A couple) should hold hands while fighting, because they are fighting for their marriage, the issue that they are fighting about is not worth fighting for, but their marriage is what is worth fighting for.."

These words were delivered yesterday at my friend's church wedding by the Father and it stayed with me long after I walked out of the church..

I am the typical kooky Aquarius who believe in signs and serendipity. What others term co-incidences, to me, are all part of a macro-system of signs - signs left out there for us to discover and to unravel the meaning behind them..

Recently, I have been having some troubling thoughts on how do we, as parents, make a commitment to our children, that as a couple, we will be able to stay together for good and be good parents for them... Are we in a position to make such a promise to them? To do so, my hubby and I need to have the confidence and commitment that we will be together for keeps... a Daunting thought in this day and age where divorce rate is climbing, where being from single parent family is not necessarily a stigma or a secret .. and I was looking for a sign that will reassure me that things will be fine.. seriously..

With baby 2 on the way, in the worst case scenario, can I still be a good mum to the 2 boys if I end up a single mum? While I was grappling with such thoughts, what the Father said when I attended the Catholic wedding got my attention and seemed to be a sign pointing a way forwards...

What he said reminded me that we have to be a good partner to our spouse first before we can perform our role as parents to our children.. As Steve Biddulph alludes to in his book "The Secrets of Happy Parents", one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to remain in love with our partner, we must love our spouse first before we can adequately love our kids..

Before we had En, hubby and I agree that kids would not be the only focus of our lives, that we will continue to keep our couple time sacred... however, along the way, sometimes the going can get just so TOUGH.. as I was just chatting with a friend with a 4 mth old baby, that it is so hard to just find time away from the baby and the energy to keep the romance alive in marriage..

Things get in the way...
- Work, work and more work..
- Resources (the money/ the capacity to look after the baby so you get adequate private time)
- Energy (after working & playing with the bb, the only thing you really want is to sleep or to veg out in front of the TV)
- Our role as a parent, and this insidious identity seems to take precedent over all other identities easily, which makes you forget that you are first your own person, and then your spouse's partner..

Now I am beginning to think that even the media seems to have gotten the message wrong.. with all the focus on family day, kids day and campaigns to have flex time or time off such that we can spend time with kids, well, before ALL that, we should find time to be a loving partner to our spouse FIRST!! And it is so easy to overlook or forget that...

Well... while what the Father said had not given me the complete solution to my musings, still, perhaps by remembering to keep the marriage alive, sizzling and sparkling, it will be a big step towards being better parents for Baby En and Baby 2... This I hope and seek..

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