blue steel
Anybody got the contact for GQ magazine? I think one of their hottest new commodities is sitting in my living room.
Be still, my beating heart.
When Tru was born, I called him chicken legs. Mostly because he had chicken legs, all skinny and bony. Every time I changed him, I held them ever so gingerly because I was afraid they would snap if I yanked too hard.
I remember looking at him during his first week at home and thinking how ironic it was that the most precious thing we had was so fragile and so easily broken.
It’s an irrational fear but nonetheless a very real one. As parents, we can’t help it. It’s terribly instinctive. My heart races and I can’t breathe and my mind goes blank because it can’t even handle the thought that something bad will happen to him.
But we held him and fed him and showered him with love and within 3 months, we had to call him thunder thighs. Mostly because he had thunderous thighs, all fat and juicy. Just as we reveled in chewing his juicy rolls, he came down with a bout of the flu and he was back to being broken all over again. He sniffled and sneezed and coughed and I felt like my heart broke with every whimper. His eyes were all teary so I held him for 6 hours straight until he managed to fall asleep on my chest.
Every time we start think that he’s alright, he would trip and knock his head or bleed all over his shirt or catch another flu bug and that awful feeling of panic would come back.
As he grew, my heart got stronger as he got stronger. The feeling of dread dissipated and I started to believe that he’s actually going to make it.
Then on Thursday, he came down with the sniffles again, which was fairly normal. But by Friday, he started wheezing and his chest heaved as he struggled to take in tiny breaths of air, which was not normal at all. Also, all that running and climbing made it worse so he would stop occasionally to catch his breath. We rushed him to the hospital and it was diagnosed as bronchiolitis, which sounds like a terribly scary word. Anything itis is bad, like meningitis or laryngitis or prostatitis, all bad.
It was by far the worst experience ever. They swabbed his nose, x-rayed him, pumped his system with ventolin and a whole ton of meds. He was back to being chicken legs all over again. He clung on to his blankie and shuffled his feet and smiled weakly when I made faces at him. During his entire hospital stay, we had to pin him down and make him inhale ventolin every 2 hours while he screamed and flailed and cried for mercy.
He’s finally home and all better now but I honestly don’t think I can take much more. Watching him struggle for breath is possibly the most painful thing I’ve ever had to do and I could feel myself breathe harder because just maybe it would help him.
That’s the thing with having kids. A piece of your heart breaks every time you see them hurting and I’m not sure I have that many pieces to spare.
One of the things I do best is improvisation. Problem solving, I like to call it. Now that I’m unemployed, it’s the only thing that makes me feel useful.
Like the other night our kitchen was invaded by a mutant lizard and the husband said it was too high to catch so I formulated a plan to terminate its miserable life. He loaded up a water pistol and armed himself with a glass of boiling water. The plan was to shoot it and when it falls off, douse it with the boiling water. Hasta la vista, baby.
Ok, so the hot water didn’t kill it like we planned and it escaped into the air con vent in the living room but it was pretty much fatally wounded so I have a feeling it crawled in there to die. Which counts for a win. I’ll improvise again when a foul smell starts coming out from my air con in a few weeks.
The only thing about improvising as opposed to advanced planning is that you end up winging it a lot. And your instincts take over so you end up doing stuff that seemed ingenious at that time but on retrospect seems like the sort of thing an airhead would do. You know the feeling you get at the precise moment where you do something and realize that it was massively moronic but it’s already done and you can’t undo it. Yeah, that feeling. I get that a lot.
See, I have 1 rule when the kids are sleeping. #1. Never wake a sleeping baby. Even if that means you have to hold in your pee and tiptoe around the house, you do it.
So when I was all out of wet wipes and Kirsten did the number 2, there was no way I was going to risk going into the room to get a new pack and wake Tru up. My other option was to wash her bottom at the basin direct without first scraping off the residual poop. On hindsight, I should have used normal tissue soaked in water but it was too much of a hassle.
Next thing I knew, there was a large piece of semi-soft poop lodged in the sink. That was when I grabbed a chopstick from the kitchen to try to poke it into the drain but it made it even more stuck and I was actually spreading the poop all around the sink drain. Flushing water down didn’t seem to work and it was too far in for me to pry it out with my hands.
It was a nice little pickle. I thought of leaving it there for the husband to discover when he got back but I’m responsible so I improvised some more. Hot water is my solution for most problems (like perverts and pests) so I spent 5 minutes pouring hot water into the sink while scraping off crap from the edges. Except that I didn’t anticipate the smell it would cause. Trust me when it say that it is FOUL. Seriously, the smell of boiled poop is exquisite beyond description.
I used to think that becoming a mother automatically makes you all grown up and smart and responsible. Guess not.
One of the good things about having 2 kids back to back is that at some point, they learn to entertain each other. They somehow get it that they’re each other’s best company and that’s the time we can almost take a breather. Until they start clawing each other’s eyes out, that is.
When I need to do something urgent like express milk or pee, I’ll put them in their respective play areas to chill out. Tru will play with the toys in his room and Kirsten will be talking to her soft toys. That buys me about 10 minutes and one of them will get restless, which is my cue to hurry up.
Today, it was strangely quiet even after 20 minutes so I decided to go check on what was going on. Lo and behold, I walked into the room to see this.
it's like they were really talking
Tru was sitting on his little chair talking to his sister and they were having a real conversation. Like making sounds at each other, with gestures and all. Moments like these, it just makes you want to go out and make more babies.
As part of Tru’s 18th month birthday celebration, we decided to give his nursery a facelift. It’s been keeping me busy the whole of last week. Kirsten was outgrowing the co-sleeper and it was nice time for Tru to transition to a toddler bed, so we gave his crib to baby girl and got 2 toddler beds for the kid’s nursery.
Why 2? It’ll eventually be used for Kirsten and in the meantime, it will serve as a spare bed for when Tru’s friends come for a sleepover. Or he can alternate beds every night like the Sultan of Brunei. We also threw in a slide to complete the look and Tru thinks his room is like playground heaven.
Tru's favorite bed for now
I think the eyes are too creepy for him
Tru can go up and down 50 times a day
Since he was getting bored with some of his toys, we retired some of them and brought out some new ones. Then every couple of weeks, we swap them again. This way, they think that they’ve got tons of new toys all the time.
We’re still working on the nursery. We’re thinking of adding wall stickers and some new curtains. I found this website with lovely fabrics which will be perfect for making curtains. I’ve shortlisted 2 but that’s where I got stuck. Here’s where I need your help. Anyone with an eye for design, some advice would be great. So what do you say? Option A or B?
Option A
Option B
To my handsome little man,
Happy 18th month! How did you grow up so fast? I miss the tiny little baby that you were, when you would lie on my chest to sleep for two hours without squirming and all you could do was look up at me with those little baby eyes. What happened to the baby eyes? Now you look at me with a glint of mischief before thinking of new ways to destroy my possessions as well as my sanity.
I'm working on the abs
In the past six months, you’ve started walking, forming words and climbing on every ledge you can find. I love that you are trying to express yourself using actual words instead of a secret code of various high-pitched shrieks. You know key words like no, eat, blanket, poop, hug, sleep, and even difficult ones like youtube, please, are you sure, are you for real, awesome.
Before you were born, we dreamed of having a ruddy, mischievous kid to turn the house upside down and you were exactly what we pictured. Smart, cheeky, funny, affectionate, generous and kind. You play with toys differently from other kids because you get bored so fast and next thing I know, you’re stacking lego blocks on your head or building a fortress using your stuffed toys. You learn stuff real fast just by watching us do it once. Every time you do something naughty, you’ll go “hey, no no” like momma does it, then proceed to do it anyway, and with much gusto.
Although what really surprised us was how sweet and generous you are. You love going around giving out hugs, even to the kid that shoved you away and snatched your toy. You hug and kiss your little sister all day and you even let her hold your precious blanket, even if your idea of sharing means she gets to hold it for 5 seconds max.
Best of all, you’re tremendous fun to be with. You’re always giggling and thinking of ways to make us laugh. Even when you have no idea what we’re laughing at, you still guffaw away like you’re in on the joke. That is hilarious.
You know how sometimes you get a present and it’s ok, not spectacular, but sometimes you get a gift and it’s out of this world, blow your mind to bits kind of awesome. It’s like that for us. The second one I mean. Twice. We feel like of all the kids in the world, we got the 2 best kids ever. We couldn’t be more proud of you. When you grow up and if you ever feel like you’re not good enough, know that there’s nothing you could do to make us love you more than we already do. And we’re ALWAYS, ALWAYS proud of you.
Love,
Mommy (and by extension, daddy as well)
ps. Don’t grow up too soon ok. One day you’re going to be too big to sit on my lap and snuggle and that will be an awfully sad day for me.
There’s just something about girls and their fathers. At five months, baby girl is unabashedly biased. She’s a daddy’s girl through and through, just like mama was.
I know exactly what it’s like because I was a daddy’s girl too. I loved hanging out with my dad, whether it was running errands, having a latte or secretly eating a double whopper just before dinner and then pretending to pick at our nutritious, home-cooked food after that. You need mommies when you’re sick and miserable, but daddies, daddies are *special*. Maybe it’s the feeling of security that fathers provide, like they’re going to make everything ok.
Tru lights up when daddy’s around but not excessively so. Kirsten, however, goes into her “where’s my daddy” mode all day from the time daddy goes to work, right up to the point when daddy comes home. She’ll be all like nonchalant all day with momma around. I mean, once in a while, she will oblige me with a patronizing smile if I try real hard to make her laugh, like “erm, ok mom, you can take the chopsticks out of your nostrils now.” When she learns how to talk, I won’t be surprised if she asks me what time daddy is coming home about 200 times a day.
where's my daddy?
And the moment she hears daddy’s voice go “hey baby girl, I’m home!”, she breaks out into the widest grin of her life. Her eyes dart to the door and she starts to chuckle and gurgle, like she’s trying to get daddy’s attention. So far, no one else but daddy has succeeded in making her giggle. It’s like he doesn’t even try and she’s giggling like well, a little girl. And the look of sheer delight when she’s in daddy’s arms, that’s priceless. NOT FAIR. How come I don’t get that kind of reception when I step out huh?
But I don’t really mind though, because I’m reluctantly going to admit that daddies are cooler. They teach you how to do all the badass stuff like making a fire with stones and killing zombies with a sledgehammer. Moms just make you eat your vegetables and clean your room.
So I’m cool with having a daddy’s girl. As long as we get to have our special girly time doing manicures. sticking rollers in our hair and checking out hot guys.
