kindermusik

Now, I know I said before that the last thing I want to become is a mom fanatic about rushing Day to classes to wring out the best in him. In this blog's first post, in fact, I made that clear.

Am I capitulating? (Hmm. First time I'm using this very big word)

Not exactly. What I have discovered is the wonderful world of Trial Classes.

Trial classes are those wonderful (yes it is and I say it twice) opportunities for parents to let their babies/tots try out the class (hence, "Trial" classes haha) before they decide if they are interested. Which is a good idea as parents never know if their kids would like a class or not, until they go through it. For a perpetually bored stay-home mom, trial classes are also a great way to keep busy, see new places and new people.

Some are free, others are not. I am a Big Fan of free trial classes (two more coming up this week) but paid ones are fine too, as it's usually just one class. They average $20 per class.

The first one Day had this week, on Monday, together with Ally (Miri fell off the bed and hit her head just before class) was the Kindermusik class. (click on the Kindermusik link and you'll find that Day sort of looks just like the little boy on the page!)

Located at Tanglin Mall, it comes in a package of 8 music classes. Of course, we just tried one class, for $20.

Both Day and Ally had missed their naps for the 11:30am class, but they seemed quite excited in the room. Here's Ally in her pretty pink dress. Doesn't the carpet set her off beautifully?



The teacher Janice then started off a 45-minute routine of:

* Songs (all of which we have never heard before so no one knew how to sing)
* Lots of percussion (the babes mostly chewed up their sticks)
* Bouncing, rolling and jumping on balls to songs
* Movement (like rocking the baby on our shins while lying on our backs, a move found in baby yoga)
* Dancing (the parents do the dancing la, while carrying the babes)

Day was, as Randy Jackson would say, awwight. He was very curious about everything in the room and seemed quite happy in there, which I take to mean the room has a good vibe.



The problem was that he was the oldest child there and was running circles round the babes who averaged 6 months old. He was supposed to be sitting in front of me the whole time but he was never there. So he'd go hit someone else's drum, grab someone else's ball. Basically act his age.



Will I bring him back? W-e-l-l.... it seems fun and it is an Outing, but I don't think so. I keep thinking I can do the same at home and save some dough!

effortless zzzzz

Never never never before has Day ever went to sleep on his own. Everyone sagely tells me "Oh, kids will just fall asleep when they want to" and I just wait with bated breath for the day when Day Just Drops Off... fat hope I thought.

Well, it finally happened!!! On Monday (28 March) Day just dropped off. He wasn't in a dark air-conditioned tomb-silent room, nobody was carrying him, patting him or singing to him - as has been his very needy pattern for the last 11 months. He just zonked out while he was sitting in a high chair in a very crowded and noisy cafe in the basement of Tanglin Mall.

No arching of his back, no wailing, no cranky attitude. Well, he was crying a bit when I went off to collect the baked potatoes, but when I got back to the table I noticed that he had double eyelids.

And within 20 seconds, even as he smiled and laughed along with us in a very comical droopy-eyed manner, he was out.

He switched off so quickly I had to catch his head as it was dropping.



Luckily Julyn (Miri's mommy) had a pillow which I managed to switch to and propped up against the arm of the high chair. He slept like that for about 30 minutes.



Unfortunately his sleeping independently seems to be a one-off event.

sleeping around the bed

The boy doesn't like sleeping on beds, he likes sleeping around them.



We chuck him in the centre but no matter how we anticipate his movements (putting him nearer the bottom if we think he will bump his way up, putting him horizontally if we think he will flip over and over) he always manages to find his way out and once out, he actually stays put.

Here he's found a comfortable spot against the wall, breathing in the dust balls from that corner.



Quite clearly, too, his fav position: Face-down, ass in the air, feet tucked under. That, I'm glad to say, seems to be the one thing (to date) he inherited from his Mum. (OK I don't sleep like that anymore but I did as as child. It made me feel tremendously secure.)

breast milk baths

In my freezer lies litres of frozen breast milk, which I had carefully expressed (that's a nice term for milking myself) every night at midnight on the dot, and packed into little plastic bags which cost a bomb simply because they are marketed as "breast milk storage bags".



Enough on slimy mark-ups. Anyhow, I stopped expressing when Day turned about six months old, since I became an official stay-home mom and didn't have to worry that he would have nothing to drink when I was at work.

Those milk bags, in the meantime, have been expiring in the freezer. We tried to feed Day some, when I'm occasionally out, but he absolutely refuses the bottle and would rather skip one, or sometimes two, feeds.

I have been cracking my head over what to do about my milk. The maximum time limit given to frozen breast milk, kept in a separate door freezer is six months. The oldest milk is already seven months old.

I could throw it all out but it was the result of a lot of hard work on my body's part and it isn't called liquid gold for nothing. Hey it contains heckuva lot of good stuff, nobody disputes the goodness of breast milk.

I could drink it but that equates to drinking your own bodly discharges which is gross. Someone else could drink it... but no one I asked was willing to.

I could donate it to another baby, only it's expired. Besides, I never donated it while it was still fresh because what if the baby who drinks my milk gets sick for some reason? Would it be MY fault?

So right now, I'm bathing in milk. Every day, I defrost one pack so it turns liquid by evening time. I dump it in Day's bathtub along with some bathwater, squeeze myself into his tiny tub and soak myself in diluted milk. Why? I've heard enough anecdotes on how breast milk has Healing Properties. How it heals insect bites, mosquito bites, rashes etc. It could be hogwash but I've got nothing to lose.

I'm not bathing Day in milk because I usually don't give him his baths, and nobody else wants to even touch the milk.

While I'm sure I won't turn into a milky-white beauty, it may do me and my very irritable skin some good. I'll file a report if it proves effective. It IS my product.

shopping hell

I still remember the good old days when we actually enjoyed bringing Day out when we went shopping, as he would drop off to sleep, lulled by our walking. That was when he was less than a month old.

Even a couple of months ago, he was still OK. We would carry him and he would watch the world go by quietly, eyes all agog.

Now, I can faint. He shrieks and screams at Parkway Parade (I have reached the stage where I look away and pretend the rascal is not my son) and he refuses to be carried half the time. With arms and legs all stiff and stretched out, he arches his back and literally slides out of our arms so he can walk.

Black feet are becoming his trademark as we usually are not prepared with shoes.

At MPH, he goes round pulling out all the books, crumpling the pages and drooling on them (I try to catch the drool before it hits). When he gets tired of it, he drops it and picks up another before zipping off. When he sees people reading in the aisles, he pads up to them and hits them; not in a violent manner but with an expectant look on his face as if he's saying - Hey! Look at me I'm here!

Other sympathetic parents with toddlers in tow look at me and smile as I tsk and drone out "Daaa-viiiid... nooooo..." in a very tired manner for the umpteenth time.

Here I am (at my Ah-Soh best) trying to stop him as he methodically pulls the teddy bears off the shelves. (His life mission now is Search and Destroy)



Too tired to stop him. He is full of glee.



On an afternote, it has been absolutely tiring chasing after him, in general. I am completely exhausted. Imagine being on your feet all day long, not being able to sit, walking up and down, up and down, making circles around the same places following the boy everywhere. Everyday! My ankles hurt. (and he hasn't started running yet)

The worst part is the numerous times I have to wrestle things away from him or carry him away from dangers like plugs. Then I have to bend over to pick up bawling, unco-operative Day and yeesh, my back hurts.

It's basically just very mentally tiring to have to watch him hawk-eyed every minute and spring into action when he gets into trouble.

That's why all we ever want to know at home now is: Is it time for his nap yet?

a new day

The last few weeks have been perhaps the most remarkable, in my journey with Day, so far. In the past 11 months, his personality has been unfurling slowly but it seems to be blossoming explosively now.

Everyday we are by turns, puzzled, exhilarated and furious by new and strange behaviours which make us wonder where the hell this is coming from. Everyday, me and Day's daddy turn to each other with raised eyebrows, frowns or dropped jaws depending on what he does. I pin it down to the time when he started walking, 2 weeks ago. I said then that he seemed to have reached a new level and that seems to be true in every sense of the word.

He does not just respond to the environment; he changes it. For our record, some of the new things he has been doing in the past 3 weeks:

Every night, before he drops off to sleep, he sits by my stomach, flings up my shirt to expose my tummy and bends down to produce a series of explosive farting sounds as he blows bubbles on my tummy. And no matter where I put him, his favourite place to sleep is with the side of his head resting on my tummy.

He keeps running to me for hugs for no reason.

He keeps going outdoors to kick a ball around.

He cries and bangs on the door when we go out of the house because he loves going out.

He has mastered buttons, specifically, using the remote controls to turn the aircon on/off/on/off etc etc, the TV on/off etc.

He seems to notice other kids around him. Instead of staring through them, he can actually look at them, point and mutter some nonsense. Or he may hit them on the head. Or forcibly grab a toy.

He used to be a picky eater. Suddenly, he is wolfing down humongous bowls of porridge and oats, whole bananas and my morning Milo. He is, however, not an indiscriminating bottomless pit. He spits out food he doesn't fancy, like cod fish porridge, and there is nothing we can do to make him eat it up.

His FIRST WORDS have emerged. They are (drum roll) ... Mama and Dada... We WISH! It's mum-mum (for food, especially adult food) and nan-nan (for milk, when he sees my breasts). Enough said about his priorities in life.

Overall he seems to have developed a rather, for want of a better word, knowing expression which makes us now wary of what we do around him.

As I lie with him, watching him through half-closed eyelids as he watches me "sleep" (so he thinks I am sleeping too), I realize that I now think of him as a person and no longer like a pet dog. He is not something that I just feed and keep clean. Is it just because he has gone from fours to twos? No. He has really, really changed.

I can say now that he is a mule-stubborn boy who ignores everything around him once he is focused on something, but who is otherwise cheerful and loves meeting people, especially toothless old men.

And I now look forward to the time that was once described this way: I am toddler, hear me roar.

My Day is no more a baby.

sock knee pads

Here's another of my attempts to improvise, the last being the stupid dentist coat.

Since Day is now trying to run and loves going outside where the roads are rough, I thought I would give him a pair of knee pads in case he falls and scrapes his knees. I cut up a pair of socks and rolled them up to his knees.

He didn't mind them. But did they work? Sadly, no. They kept sliding down. Probably because I cut up a pair of loose socks which no one was wearing.

home haircut horror

Day had been looking a bit hippy and boho as his hair was growing well over his ears and the nape of his neck. I wish I could say he looked like Aniki Jin but no. Most of the time, his hair clung to his head like rat's tails because he was dripping with sweat.



It was time for a haircut. The last time Day had a haircut was three months ago, at Christmas. Then, we paid just over a dollar for him to have his hair cut at a Malaysian barber. In Singapore, it could cost $10.

Now the best thing about babies is that you can do all sorts of things to them and they wouldn't know. My mother and brother (Day's por-por and uncle respectively) decided that they could do the job just as well. Pay them, they said. My response: See how.

We stuffed him into his high chair. With their tools (a pair of scissors each), uncle took the fringe and top while por-por took the sides and back. While uncle concentrated on creating layers, por-por focused on cutting Straight Lines. (Does anyone see the problem yet?) I took a metal plate and gave him a pair of chopsticks to create clanging noises, so he would focus on the front. The three of us spent a good 20 minutes dancing around his high chair.



As he was drenched in sweat after the cut, and his hair was again in rat tails (albeit shorter tails), the true horror of the haircut was not apparent until he had a bath and his hair was dry.



In mitigation, por-por said she did not have an electric shaver. On my part, I am NOT paying them a single cent.

hair-dried

Oh, the things we do to our kids!

Day wanted the hairdryer so I gave it to him full in the face.

playground fun

Since Day started walking, we've turned his trips to the library into sort of a Doublebill featuring the Library and Playground, since they're literally next to each other.

The playground is not one of those old sandpit-type affairs featuring rusty horrors (I do miss those, though) but a new-fangled bright plasticky area plonked on top of a huge porous rubbery mat. It's the perfect place for Day to fall. We stripped him of his shoes, let him down and he was off. He seems less interested in the actual playground equipment than the yellow flowers littering the ground, which were blown down from the trees.

He's always had a thing for leaves and flowers. He thinks they're snacks.



The rest of the time, he was running, falling, playing Catch with daddy - who did not seem to care that the mat, run over by thousands of kids, is probably dirtier than the ground.



He sure did a lot of bare-foot running. At the end of it all, this is what his feet looked like.

marvellous mirella

Why marvellous? It goes with Mirella, that's why!

But seriously, Miri, the six-month-old baby Day and I visited today, is quite the marvel. Here's why:



ONE
She was 2.1 kilograms when she was born (that's TEENY, Day was an obese 3.7 kilograms when he emerged), so small that the hospital nurses insisted that she be stuffed with formula milk for she could not afford to lose the obligatory 10% of body weight which babies tend to lose. She is still small now, but is quite the tough cookie.

TWO
When Day and I visited, Miri had a black right eye. Her mummy says she probably poked herself in the eye with her fingers, which were in her mouth, when she had a fall. But that's not the first time. She's already fallen from a high chair (she unexpectedly stood up and fell out), a cradle (she unexpectedly turned over) and a bed (she probably unexpectedly crawled to the edge). She's obviously full of unexpecteds.

THREE
She knows how to crawl to and cry to strangers (me) to be carried because she knows her no-nonsense mummy is not giving in to emotional blackmail. Did I give in? Of course. How can I possibly resist a soft, downy baby dressed in a pink Elmo playsuit?

Her mummy, Julyn, is an ex-journalist colleague who also chose to stay home to look after her baby. Julyn, however, is the real deal. The stay-home mom who also cooks, cleans, packs up.

Baby Day (I think I can safely say at this point that he does not suffer from stranger anxiety) was pleased as punch to be there. He was thrilled to find familiar favourites like electrical sockets, standing fans and remote controls. He totally neglected the floor-full of baby toys and baby Miri. Miri, however, crawled to him because she wanted him to carry her. Imagine!

Here they are, and the only reason they are sitting together is because we made them sit there. See how they share the same quirky eyebrows? That could be a Monkey trait.



While there, Day also terrorised Miri's cat, Aurie. The poor dear is an old cat who was mostly sleeping throughout the four hours me and Day were there, she never even stirred from her corner. For that reason, she did not twitch when Day grabbed her pelt and yanked off a handful of hairs. The delinquent.

bicycling day

Day loves going for a spin with Daddy on the bicycle now, it's something new. But just last week, we had a horrible scare.

It's no fun having a bike accident with a helmet-less baby strapped on behind, but that's exactly what happened. The poor baby who had his head scraping the road, of course, was Day.

It was only our second time out with Day in the bicycle seat, which daddy foolishly bought when Day was six months old (thinking that the fat floppy boy could manage then but of course he couldn't.)

Recently we decided that at 10 months, he's finally got enough backbone to sit in his bicycle throne which was getting dusty. First practise ride was fine.

The disaster happened when Day's daddy's bike clipped the back wheel of my bike. In years of cycling, we have never fallen because of this, but maybe because of the extra 10kg weight on the back wheel, daddy's bike skidded.

After a horrible screeching of brakes, the bike went down. Daddy was thrown off as the bike crashed onto the ground and skidded to a stop. Day, securely strapped but without a helmet, hit the road on the side of his head even as the bicycle wheels continued spinning. Our hearts literally stopped but thank God he started bawling.

Minutes later, we had to stuff him back into the fearsome chair in order to go home. He cried a little, but was resigned.

He just got a lump for it (thank God again) and we're not taking any more chances.

$60 got us a very groovy Pikachu bike helmet which is compulsory for him.



And despite the accident, which would be scary even for an adult (imagine being strapped into the seat of a falling bicycle) he seems to have forgotten the awful fall. Here he is enjoying one among the dozens of traffic lights we pass.

the little walker

HISTORY IN THE MAKING: Baby Day is walking and I mean proper unsupported w-a-l-k-i-n-g!



He suddenly launched into solo flight several days ago on March 1, when we brought him to the library. The rush of endorphins (he was very high and giggly there) probably tipped him over the edge for it gave him that little bit of extra confidence to cross that final psychological hurdle.

Lord knows it's taken forever. He stood on his own and took his first solo step two months ago so for us it's been Hurry Up and Get On With It!

Every day he walks a great deal more. It's amazing how once he realized that he can walk on his own, his mobility learning curve has just shot up. From 3 metres on the first day, to 10 metres on day 2 and now he's walking across the entire house, even going up and down steps, usually holding onto and waving some silly object like a remote control in his hands.

It's such a great show. We watch with goofy smiles on our faces as he lurches drunkenly (like a penguin, his Gong Gong says) from point A to B, shoulders raised as if he is poised to fall. Sometimes, he does like what Keanu Reeves did in the Matrix when he was dodging bullets, contorting backwards and frontwards to keep on his feet.



And always, always, his walking comes with a whole host of sound effects: Squealing, gasps, chuckles, like he cannot believe his luck at getting on his feet.

In the last few days, life has changed entirely in the household for us. I can play the piano in peace, he no longer wails every 5 minutes for someone to come and hold his hands. Now, he disappears to odd corners on his own and we are left wondering where he is (which is also a bit scary).

He's come such a long way. Here he was at the beginning of his walking journey at four months, with his human walker.



We're just very very relieved. Finally, an end to six l-o-n-g months of painfully bending over, holding his hands while scurrying along with him.

For him, though, it's a whole lot more, he's literally graduated to a higher level. His life has changed completely and he's officially a two-legger. No more dusty hands or raw knees too yippee.

desperately seeking moms

I have always wanted to meet up with other stay-home moms, start a network, organise playgroups for the kids, because otherwise boredom would strike again!

Most of my friends, however, are not married. If they are, they have no chidren. If they have children, they are still working. And if they are actually stay-home moms, they stay too far away for me and baby Day to visit. (we take buses and trains because I'm too poor to take taxis)

So it was a real stroke of luck when I recently got in touch with Debbie. An ex-broadcast journalist colleague, she got pregnant four months after me and also quit her job to stay home. The best part is, she stays relatively nearby.

Baby Day and me dropped by Debbie's place the other day, to visit baby Alison, and it was a Perfect Day. To get there, we had to take a bus, cross an overhead bridge and take another bus which took us 45 minutes, but Day loved flirting with the aunties who were cooing and clucking away at him on the buses.

Day, again, was inexplicably happy at Debbie's place. Could be because it's a really lovely cooling ground-floor apartment which overlooks a palm-fringed pool, so with a real leap of imagination, it can pass for the Bahamas.

Baby Alison was a darling. The little troll (that's what her folks call her) has a trademark floaty halo of wispy hair which has not been cut since birth and it's gorgeous.



Debbie and baby Alison.



Alison was also a very happy baby who seems to have inherited Debbie's easy-going, smiley temperament. Alison somehow found Day very amusing and kept giggling at him. The two didn't play much though. Day found his way to the remotes, sound system and DVD player and that kept him occupied the whole afternoon. Here they are, in a rare instance of "playing" together.



Baby Day did have a swim after his nap. In the end it was the knee-high taps at the shower areas which he found more captivating.



We do intend to go to Deb's regularly. It's nice to chit-chat with a fellow mom sometimes. It's only with Deb that I can seriously discuss the properties of baby shit and laugh about dried up saliva and pee on our clothes.

library playground

For want of things to do (the amazing thing about being a stay-home mum is that I actually have to rack my brains for things to fill me and baby Day's time, and I usually get bored after 2 full days at home) I've brought Day to the nearby library at Marine Parade twice.



I'm glad to say he absolutely loves it. Not for the books - which he revels in pulling off the shelves in handfuls - but the place. It's a lovely jewel of a space on the third floor, strewn with colourful kid-size leather sofas and surrounded by floor to ceiling glass windows. He loves crawling over the sofas, and looking at the heads of people walking below or cars whizzing past.



For some strange reason, he also gets absurdly happy in the library and goes round the place squealing.

He especially loved this play corner where kids are supposed to discover the planets. There were loads of buttons for him to press and we think he likes the bright orange floor. If he looks a little strange in that outfit, it's because he was wearing his usual holy-singlet/diaper combi and the library is probably about 18 degrees. The Osh Kosh shirt was a Christmas present from his auntie Pris! It's way too big but it sure keeps him warm.



Anyway, I do hope one day he will grow to love the books in the library and not just the library space. His daddy doesn't go to the library and only reads textbooks, but mummy is a voracious reader who goes to library once a week to borrow only fiction books. I hate non-fiction, and that includes textbooks and self-help drivel. Maybe I have my head in the clouds.

I've been trying to get baby Day interested in books since I started reading him the newspaper headlines when he was a month old (frankly, for want of something to do because he could only stare at me blankly. What else could I do to entertain him?)

Since then, he's got a load of Ladybird books from an ex-colleague who reviewed books for the newspaper. I brought them home in a bag from another ex-colleague who was a health reporter, and that has since become his own personal Book Bag (it's a contact lens company's bag) with a permament Book Collection.

Here he is in his favourite reading corner, by the window on the bed, with his book bag, flipping through two of his fav books.



Looks impressive but he's no bookworm. His flipping doesn't last more than 10 seconds and he scoots away when I try to read to him. Maybe a love for stories is genetic.