alicia m

Circa 1960?

I just couldn't resist! Day looks like he's being match made and is meeting his bride-to-be for the first time. He's too shy to hold her hand and too nervous to crack a smile.

The lovely girl is Alicia M, first and only child of my primary and secondary school friend, Karen. She dropped by the other day with two humongous bags of winter clothes for Dee, and Alicia stayed for a while to hang around with Day. Day, unfortunately, had just napped and woke up on the wrong side of bed. He was rather grumpy and unfriendly.

Alicia, however, was busy bustling in and around the house with a smile on her face.

gas her

It was just an innocuous phlegmy cough, nothing else.

Whatever possessed me to bring Dee to the paediatrician that morning, I don't know. Probably the heartbreaking sound of hearing her hacking away, phlegm gurgling in her throat.

From the moment I walked into the clinic, I went down a bewildering spiral of fear and "what ifs" that resulted in my having to lug an entire machine home, drag Day to the clinic as well and end up $300 poorer. So much for the money I saved from my polyclinic visit.

This is what transpired between me and the doctor:

Me: "She's having a phlegmy cough which kept her up most of last night."

Doc: "From the looks and sound of it, it appears to be myclopasma. At her age, it could get very dangerous. It could go into her lungs and she could end up going into the hospital."

Me: "Oh."

Doc: "I hate to do this, but I have to give her Zithromax antibiotics and put her on the nebulizer because she's quite bad. Does David have a cough too?"

Me: "Yes. I think he gave it to her, he's had the phlegmy cough for a few days now but I'm not too concerned as he seems fine."

Doc: "You have to bring him in too. No point me treating her, then her brother gives it right back to her."

Me: "Won't the antibiotics protect her?"

Doc: "Not in this case. She can get re-infected."

And when I go in with Day (after bringing Dee home):

Doc: "He's actually OK. He's fighting it and he's doing fine. If I didn't know about Jody, I wouldn't give him antibiotics. But now I have to because he might re-infect her."

So there. Both my kids on antibiotics (Day's second course in his entire life, Dee's first) and I have to pay $10 a day to rent a Nebulizer machine which essentially vaporizes Dee's meds so she breathes in the medicated mist.

I have to bring her back tomorrow so the doc can have a look at her again and I reckon I'm going to be charged another consultation fee.

When I came back with machine in tow, my dad said something rude about profiteering doctors.

Although I must say, I don't think doting fearful parents really mind that much about splurging on their kid's health. Dee really stopped coughing after a day. I should have become a paed. Preferring to err on the side of caution can be rather profitable.

I wonder what the polyclinic would have prescribed.

It's been an interesting learning experience for me though, operating the Nebulizer. Without a proper demonstration, one is required to think like an engineer and chemist to put the darn thing together correctly.

Like having to use a syringe with needle attached (the actual syringe used for vaccinations) to carefully measure out and mix minute quantities from four different medicines, which were all packaged differently, some of which I didn't even know how to open. I was even more petrified that I would accidentally jab myself with the needle.


Then I had to put the mixture into a receptacle which had to be screwed onto another gadget, which then had to be fixed to the gas mask and the whole thing then had to be linked via pipe to the machine.


Very trying. The good thing is, breathing in is a damn good way to take your meds. I mean, who would mind? The mist, which is cool and rather refreshing, doesn't even smell. And Dee doesn't mind it at all.

letter play

On the left, senseless words which, nevertheless, are pronounceable. Hooray for Day!

He has a burgeoning penchant, too, for symmetry and neatness which sometimes borders on the anal.

dee's ark

There's our Magic Sleep Solution.

This bouncing, rocking cradle has proven to be our salvation, turning Dee from a crying monster into a loveable sweetie pie who is, I can now say, a rather easy baby.

We have kissed goodbye to terrifying afternoons and evenings of relentless crying jags and enduring sore arms after hours of carrying her without daring to move a muscle.

We are finally, genuinely, able to enjoy her, thank God. (No, the pacifier and letting her cry it out didn't work after a while. She spit out the former and as for the latter, the crying never stopped)

It was all so simple. Sometime last week, at the suggestion of Jason, whose boy Kieran had the same problem, I decided to try the sarong on her again. It's an Amby baby bed which we bought for Day nearly 2 years ago, but it was wasted money then as he would not sleep in it.

We had tried it on Dee before, when she was about a month old, but it didn't work then and she would continue screaming even when dumped into the sarong.

This time it worked - and I hate to use this word again but it's true - like Magic. To my disbelief, she went to sleep after a few whimpers and when she characteristically jerked awake, I bounced the sarong and she went down again. I was so ecstatic I felt like I was getting my year-end bonus.

Another lesson learnt: What doesn't work before doesn't mean it won't work again.

She sleeps so well in the sarong, rocking and rolling away, she can go over three hours in it without a flicker of an eyelid. An adult would probably feel seasick and want to puke, but I think babies like the sensation.


For the past week, I haven't had a single impulse to want to throw her away, and that's saying a lot. She wakes up fresh and happy and smiley, all ready to gurgle at whoever picks her up. Me lah.

And I'm surprised at how much she actually sleeps. Nowadays, with some variation, she usually sleeps three hours in the morning, two in the afternoon and is in bed for the night by 8pm.

I have decided that I HAVE to bring the sarong to Sydney, even if it means throwing out some clothes to keep within baggage limits.

catching up

She was born quite a lot smaller than her brother, at 3kg compared to his 3.7kg.

The last thing I expected was for Dee to outweigh Day at the same age, but there it is. At three months, she is 6.7kg compared to his 6.6kg.

Bearing in mind I'm fairly certain that she takes half the amount of breast milk Day used to, it makes me wonder:
Is it really that much easier for the female species to put on weight? I mean, she eats less but gains more.

Moreoever, as she is a full 4cm shorter than Day (at three months of age), she looks fatter and rounder as there's a smaller frame to spread out all that baby fat.

Anyhow, here's the pictorial comparison, sans clothes. It's pretty obvious who is who.

polyclinic virgin

The need to save up for Australia meant that I recently walked into a polyclinic on Friday for the first time in my life, with Dee in tow, for her third-month DPT and Polio vaccines.

KK was not happy about it: He wanted Dee to go back to her swanky paediatrician at Kinder Clinic. I decided that the shorter waiting time, bright toy-strewn waiting room and the $50 I have to pay just to see the doc's face was out of our league at the moment.

So I ventured into the Marine Parade Polyclinic. After two hours, I emerged poorer by ...... $4.70. The jab was free. I only had to pay $4 to see the doctor - a requirement for first-time patients - and 70 cents for her fever meds.

Sure. Some things were unpleasant.

* The waiting time, for one. I had to queue at six stops: The registration counter, the nurse station (for nurses to have a look at Dee), the doctor (for him to have a look at Dee), the nurse station again (to give the jab), the cashier and the pharmacy.

* Lots and lots of germs. There were hordes of sick people thronging the polyclinic, most of whom looked genuinely sick with red noses and runny eyes, and every 10 seconds or so, someone would throw a cough our way.

* The endless documentation. Dee was assigned a bar code, which was duly stuck on her health book, everything from her height and weight were duly noted and stamped, there was just heaps of paper work. Our longest wait (over half an hour), in fact, was for her file to be readied.

* The doctor who looked at Dee is obviously a young man who looked to be in his late 20s, who didn't seem to know much about babies. To check if she could hold her head up, he didn't even pull her up the right way.

* The person administering the jab was a young nurse who, as my mother remarked in Cantonese, was "coarse" in manner. Meaning that as I held Dee down, I saw how the nurse jabbed the very long needle in, held it there for a second or two before slowly pressing in the vaccine and slowly withdrawing. Which means that in the aftermath of the vaccine, the injection site hurt like hell and even after a day, Dee screams when her right thigh is pressed. The paed does it in a flash, I hardly see a thing.

But hey. It is $4.70 vs a bill of over $100 (for consultation and jab at a private paed). And if I didn't see the doctor and if I already had fever meds at home, I wouldn't even have had to pay a cent.

As a result of the vaccine, Dee got her first fever, which registered 38.9 degrees at its highest. It's higher than normal because the vaccine she got was the 3-in-1 rather than the 4 or 5-in-1, and which I gather from the nurse may cause a higher-than-normal fever because it's not so "refined". Whatever.

She was horribly bothered. She slept the whole day Friday and woke up in the middle of the night all hot.


I fed her fever meds and slapped a cool patch on her forehead. To her credit, she coo-ed and gurgled and I played with her for a bit at 3am before she dropped off to sleep again. Yes, she actually managed to smile at times, even though she cried a lot too.


This pic makes me smile. She looks so sunny.

I definitely wouldn't bring Dee or Day to the polyclinic if they were actually sick or required looking at.

But for standard vaccinations which are compulsory under the National Immunisation Programme, why the hell not?

day says...

"I don't want papa. I love mummy because mummy is nice and clean."

- Just before falling asleep.

"i'm not tired"

Day was supposed to sleep last night but he argued his way out of it.

In the dark, he told his papa: "I'm not tired. What's everybody doing out there, ha?"

He's got real sleep issues nowadays. I can kiss my days of regular 1-3pm naps and 9pm-730am sleep times goodbye.

He never wants to go to sleep and because of that everything gets screwed up.

One day, he wakes up from his nap at 6pm and ends up sleeping near midnight, another he misses his nap entirely and beds down for the night before 8.

Frankly it doesn't really bother me because he doesn't get cranky the way he used to. He just goes On and On and On like an Energizer bunny, doing his own stuff and generally not getting in anybody's way.

But if I let him do what comes naturally to him (which sounds good on paper), he'll probably end up a late sleeper and late riser or not getting enough sleep; like me.

my little man

This is the time of the Terrible Twos.

And Day is terrible. He has become so, I notice, ever since Dee was born.

But this isn't about his bad side, which I'll write about some other time when he pisses me off.

It's about his good side which, I also notice, emerged in the last few months. By good, I mean his burgeoning sense of independence and sensibility, which allows me to treat him like a little man and which allows him to treat me, sometimes, like he's my guardian.

Case in point: Monday, when he didn't go to school and was such an absolute darling I actually had time to go round with my camera - when not carrying Dee - to snap shots.

I didn't have to pay attention to him the ENTIRE day, just gave him the occasional instruction. He was mostly pottering around on his own with his toys.


Soiled nappies from Dee, I handed over to him and he ran to the back of the house to drop them into the pail before turning on the hose of his own accord to run some water in. He probably thinks it's fun.


He helped to entertain his sister.


He wanted to pee while I was lying down on the bed feeding Dee. I told him to remove his pants himself and pee in the toilet bowl. He went and came back, bottom bared, to report that the stool he usually stands on is missing. No sweat, I told him to pee on the toilet floor. Which he did.

I guess he's been trained because Dee's such a stress point, I'm just too busy catering to her whims to care much about anything else.

If he behaves like this all the time in Sydney, it'd be a real bonus. I'm really proud of him.

visiting angie

Amazing Deborah.

Three weeks after giving birth to Angeline or Angie (31 May) and she's already been back to her shop Maternity Exchange to hire new staff, keep things running and even scout for new locations.

That's not all. Through sheer grit and determination, she managed to have a completely natural birth without gas or epidural or injections of any kind, just loads of positive thinking which got her through an agonizing four hours of pushing and grunting.

And that's after she gave birth via a (probably) uncessary Caesarean operation first time round. They say once a Caesar, always a Caesar and I'm glad she managed otherwise.

Angie's birth story(it's all peaceful and affirmative) is so different from mine (aptly titled birthing terror).

It also strikes me how Deb had to put in so much more EFFORT to give birth naturally. She had to:

* Find one amongst the handful of gynaes in Singapore (can count on one hand) who will respect what mothers want and not operate / induce / cut to speed things up or make more money (Caesars, of course, make fatter wallets)

* Switch gynaes when she was already past 35 weeks pregnant

* Find and pay a doula who would help her enjoy the birth as much as possible, as well as get rid of unhelpful irritating nurses who kept going "Girl ah! You can / can't...." while she was in labour

* Watch loads of tapes to eradicate terror-filled notions of labour pains which most of us have. I certainly did.

That's giving birth in Singapore for you. Mostly unpleasant, mechanical and you have no say.

Anyhow back to Angie. Peacefully birthed and emerging into the world without any drugs in her bloodstream, she looks lovely.


Huge bright eyes, sharp nose and rosebud lips. Ah. Nobody will think this one is a boy.

At the moment, she also seems peace-loving and tranquil. Put her back in the cot after a feed and she stays quiet. Unlike our dear friend Dee, who I think Angie found rather alarming.


Then of course, Day was "re-united" with Ally, Angie's big sis. The chemistry they shared before seems to have evaporated, for apart from a short giggly jaunt on Ally's new rainbow bed, the two hardly spoke or even looked at each other.

lord of the rings

Some kids love the moving image. Dee for one, will stop squalling whenever she is put in front of the TV and the screen is a very effective baby sitter.

However, Day isn't one of them. He has a passing interest, he knows TV/movies exist and he occasionally switches on the tube for a spot of Bob the Builder or Sesame Street, but by and large he's not an addict. (not yet anyway)

So it came as a bit of a surprise when he was completely captivated by Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers) which was screening on Channel 5 tonight.

He decided to look up from his toys and the moment he saw the orc battle he abandoned his Lego for the rest of the night, sitting down for a good hour right till the end.


I couldn't see his face as he insisted on sitting in front of me. But I reckon he was mostly scared. No wonder. The only full-length movie he has ever seen - and only once - was the Ice Age cartoon which he saw on the laptop in parts with his papa.

For a good while, I wondered if I should drag him away from the gore on screen but heck, I wanted to watch.

Strange too, that he was mostly interested in Aragorn doing battle. Whenever scenes switched to Treebeard or Frodo, he turned to me frowning and asked: "Where's Uncle?"

Will he remember this?

He's probably too young.

I remember being movie-obssessed but only when I was five or six. And those movies, which I taped and watched over and over again, are the ones that will stay in my mind forever.

Clash of the Titans, Superman 1/2/3 etc etc, Sound of Music. I even used to listen to the music and score them, note by note. That's why I can still hear "Clash of the Titans" in my head till this day.

typical morning

Mornings, between 730 and 8, there's a pounding on our door followed by the insistent refrain: "Open the door! Open the door!"

It's Day, come from the room next door where he sleeps with his Uncle Choon.

Once the door is open, he comes in and flings himself on the mattress on the ground where his parents and the baby is sleeping.

He sidles up to his mei-mei and inevitably wakes her up,stroking her cheek and bleating: "Hello, mei-mei".


For a few minutes, they eyeball each other. She laughs at him.

Looking at them is a great way to start the day.

salvation

Ah, mercy is when KK arrives home.


Suddenly the world is a better, brighter place and it's easier to breath.

From his pocket, he whips out chocolates and sweets for Day, while his strong arms are more than happy to receive his heavy daughter.

Everybody is happy, especially Dee who quietly goes to sleep in her papa's arms a short while later.


I cannot imagine not having him around and I cannot ask for a better father for my kids.

maid-less

As I sit here next to the baby cot, Dee is in it, yelling, screaming and sometimes, whimpering. She is so, so sleepy but I am not going to carry her for two, three hours straight through the difficult afternoon period like the maid used to.

How am I supposed to when I have to look after Day, fold the clothes, wash the cups etc etc?

It is freaking tiring.

Perhaps it is a good thing that I am going maid-less now, so I know what I am letting myself in for when I go over, rather than tear my hair out when I am there.

My poor baby girl, too, is having just as hard a time.

For the last two days, she has been just crying and yelling and yelling and crying until her voice breaks and she's all hoarse, she sounds like she's got loads of phlegm in her throat.

When she does this, I carry her upstairs, put her in her cot, close the doors and shut my ears. Just now, zombified, I shuttled between one room with a crying Dee to the other with crying Day.

Now she's going hic-hic-hic in her sleep, the way people do after they have cried for ages, but gives the occasional scream as if to say: I won't give up.

It breaks my heart but at the same time, I am so damned frustrated I want to yell at her. When I'm tired and sweaty and just stretched thin, I have nothing left for her.

Day was never subjected to this sort of cold turkey treatment because he was the one and only and there were more hands on deck. With Dee, I have absolutely no choice.

I'd like to put in a photo. But I have no energy.

I'll just have to get used to this. Develop nerves of steel. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Whatever.

maid peril

This woman will never touch my daughter again.

Yesterday, we packed our maid off to the Philippines. We sat her down at 10am to break the news to her, the maid agent came at 11am and she was off to the Philippines by 1pm.

It's not something we have ever done and its not something we ever want to do again. Indeed, no one wanted to stay to do the cruel deed. I shooed out of the house at 930am with Dee in tow, Day safely in school, I wanted no histrionics concerning my kids. And God knows, she can certainly put up a show.

But this was not meant to be an amicable parting.

We no longer wanted someone in our house who is a confirmed liar, and who we strongly suspected of being a slut and a thief.

Over the past week, my mom actually surreptitiously interviewed maids around the area to get their version of events versus what our maid claimed and as the story emerged, corroborated by more than one maid, as we discussed it every night, I became so furious I dredged up Cantonese swear words from the depth of my subconsciousness that I never knew existed. I was RAGING MAD. At one point, I wanted to march downstairs, shake her out of her sleep and slap her silly.

On her departure, I was so incensed I typed out a 500-word letter detailing all her transgressions. Spoken words, I felt, would not be enough. This is a summary:

* You seem to be in Singapore not just to work, but to meet men. When you first came, you made over $100 worth of calls to 1900 chat lines from our house phone. After you borrowed your friend's handphone, telling her that you wanted to call the Philippines, she received calls from several strange men. We also saw an Indian man walking to and fro in front our house who stared at you.

* We suspect that you are meeting men while bringing David to school. Not only do you dress up, we have smelt perfume on you sometimes in the mornings.

* We got a phone call from a man who said you borrowed $500 from him, and that you had sex with him on three occasions.

* You have gone out on several occasions. That is not a problem with us. Our problem is, we are not sure if you are going out for the reason you claim. One night you went out for over three hours until 11pm and you expect us to believe you were waiting for a cousin who never showed up.

* It is dubious how you manage to pay for the many phone calls you make.

* We suspect you of taking coins from around our house to pay some of the maids, whose phone cards you had borrowed, to make calls.

* You are frequently accusing other maids of trying to frame you. This is highly unlikely as these maids are more likely to help rather than to harm their fellow Filipinas. Even if this is the case, why is every maid in the area trying to frame you?

* We do not know when to believe you. You appear to be a liar and an opportunist who is taking advantage of us, from borrowing Sir’s hand phone and using it to call men, to thinking that we will stupidly take your side and believe your stories. Even if it means losing the $400 we lent you, we will be better off sending you home.

She read the letter silently and didn't try to deny a thing. Then she hurried into her bedroom to delete all incriminating SMS-es before returning us the phone.

For six months, we were still hovering on her side, thinking it would be too cruel to pack her off. My mom kept wanting to give her a second chance, and another, and another.

Me, after having covered so many maid abuse cases in court and generally thinking that Singaporean employers are a heartless bunch, was especially divided.

But after realizing that she was trying her level best to poison my mind against other maids, making use of me so she could go out on short trips presumably to meet men, getting me to print her photo so she could give it to strange men and worse, meeting men while bringing my son to school, enough was enough.

I don't care about her welfare anymore. I care about mine and especially that of my kids.

She's the sort who might drop Dee on her head and then lie about it later. Or cuddle up to a man while Day sits in his pram nearby.

At this point, I think I can understand why some mothers abuse their maids. Especially those who felt that their children were ill-treated or abused.

I'm so, so glad she's gone.

bag that pee

Today we had a perfectly ordinary Saturday afternoon spent in a perfectly ordinary manner, going to the library and the shopping centre for a pasta bite before going home.

What made today different from every other family outing we've had, and which will make this day stick in my memory way down the line, was what happened in the taxi.

See, Day had to pee.

And when kids have to go, they HAVE to go.

Even though it was just a 10-minute ride home, and even though we tried everything we could think of to take his mind off his full bladder, nothing cut it.

Grabbing his crotch with his hand, his nonchalant "I want to shh-shh" turned into a desperate whimper as he doubled over trying not to leak as I, his equally desperate mother, worked through the option of either getting the cabbie to stop or looking for a suitable receptacle.

Finally, I grabbed a plastic bag, emptied it, yanked down his pants, took several panicky seconds to aim his uncooperative organ into the equally uncooperative bag before I gave him the all-clear.

Thankfully thankfully thankfully, though it was horribly hard to manouver, not a drop spilled.

I laughed so hard I cried. KK, who was carrying Dee, was merely amused.

I didn't even want to think about what was going through the cabbie's mind. He remained steadfastly silent throughout.

chicken and duck talk

I have always taken pride in coming from full-blooded Cantonese stock. No dilution from other dialect groups anywhere in the family tree.

KK on the other hand is a full-blooded Hakka.

Too bad for Day and Dee.... but that's not the point!

Point is, their grandparents try their level best to expose them (actually, just Day to date) to their respective dialects.

He gets a shot of Hakka on Sundays and a sip of Cantonese on other days from his por por who makes it a point to speak nothing but Cantonese to him.

And their conversations, if you can call it that, are quite the comedy.

What always happens is this: My mom gets hold of bait. Namely, some tasty tidbiit that she herself is nibbling on. Like haw flakes or guava with plum powder or preserved fruit. She then uses the bait to tempt him into speaking Cantonese. Like so.


To date, these are the only words I have ever heard him speak in Cantonese: Oi (I want), Mm-oi (I don't want) and dor jae por por (thank you por por).

As por por breezily points out, he'll probably forget it all by the time he returns from Australia.

It's sad. But hey, what can I do? I haven't even got started on the Chinese.

d-day: 17 july

That's it then. We're leaving on a one-way ticket to Sydney on Monday, 17 July.

One-way because we are not intending to come back within 12 months, only when KK finishes his course which would probably be 1 1/2 years later.

We had intended for KK to go first to check things out, then we'll follow. As usual, our hearts ruled over our minds and we decided to go as a family. Total cost: S$2039 (I have to pay $180 for Dee as well, grief) and we still have to pay for tickets to come back. Whew.

Seems a bit drastic, plunging headlong into this adventure without looking back, but hey, as a hostel friend of mine Kim Hoh used to say, "Just Whack!"

Exactly three years ago, I was just as busy preparing for a big life event, our wedding, which was also in July.

Feels the same.

The endless worrying, sleepless nights thinking about everything that could go wrong, trying to organise every minute of the day. Only this time, it's something we want for ourselves (ya lah, we didn't want the wedding dinner) so it's a bit more fun and less of a chore.

Then again, it's a lot more onerous because of the kids. If it were just the two of us, it would be a super exciting adventure. I would be looking forward to finding strange jobs, meeting people and sucking up new life experiences.

But now we are PARENTS. As KK always says, he doesn't mind suffering. But he doesn't want the kids to suffer along with us.

We'll see. I still think the entire journey will be more good than bad.

oral developments

Day's teacher commented to me the other day: You know, Mrs Loh, he's been playing with his tongue a lot.

True enough, he was twisting and twirling his tongue this way and that.

Day's got an amazingly flexible tongue. It was huge when he was born, a thick muscle mass which was perpetually protruding out of his mouth. Now, it's somewhat thinner but it's damned long, I reckon he can reach his nose with it though I have never asked him to try.

Then we discovered that his tongue gymnastics includes this move:


Now though I can twist my tongue upside-down, I can't do this. KK can.

I's one of those very interesting genetic skills where either you can do it, or you can't. It's nature all the way, no amount of nurture is going to enable you to twist your tongue into an O if you can't.

I'm trying to see if Day can move his little toe independently of the rest, but he doesn't seem to be able to at the moment.

Other oral developments: Dee has been chewing on a pacifier.


Yup. Seems the tigress wasn't tamed after all and she didn't stop crying.

So we tried this.

Does it work? Not really. She doesn't really like it and pushes it out most of the time with her tongue. But sometimes, I guess when she figures she's not going to get anything else, she sucks on it like a lollipop.

he cries she cries

Theirs is a blossoming relationship, and this is what I observe of Day and Dee so far:

* She adores him. Looks for him all the time. If he dances circles around her head, her head swivels round and round following his feet.

* Whatever he does to her, she usually doesn't mind. Smack her, sit on her, shout in her ear. She's OK.

* He likes her, truly. His usual approach on catching sight of Dee is to cock his head to one side and intone in a strange high-pitched squeak: "Helloooo Mei Mei!" before bending in for a kiss. Usually, she turns away so he gets her on the nose in which case he turns to me and squeals indignantly: "But I want to kiss her!" Then he tries again and successfully smears saliva all over her downy cheek.

* He attempts to give her toys and feed her biscuits. But that's because he knows very well she can't accept.

* When I attempt to play with Dee with some toy or other, he wants it for himself, even if it's a dirty old rattle which he hasn't played with forever.

* When he cries, she cries.

Like today. We unearthed a dusty old mat with hanging mobiles, one of those things where babies can lie on their backs on and quietly stare upwards.

We put her under. Day insisted on going under too. Once he was there, however, he started putting her in danger - meaning he started kicking and yanking things.

We insisted he bugger off. He refused to and started yelling. Dee wonders what's going on.


He cries she cries. Her face puckers up, what I call her "chao bin".


For the record, Day as an infant has NEVER had that sulky pout expression Dee has on her face. She starts yelling too.
We forcibly pull Day out and cart him off somewhere.
Dee wonders where her bro's gone. I think she misses him.

chubby cherub

This is a post about Absolutely Nothing. Just some pics of Dee (2 1/2 months now) taken today, just because I decided to put her in a hand-me-down dress.


She's a fat one. But I truly believe the fattest babies become the thinnest people - me and my brother for instance - so there's hope for her yet.


That's Dee with Mylene, who helps me to look after her.