Baby: September 2004 Archives

Faith has been feeling rather down these past few days. The nausea has been acting up, and while she hasn’t actually thrown up yet, it pains me to no end seeing how lousy she feels. She’s amazing in that she hasn’t uttered a “this sucks”-type statement yet. Truly a wife of noble character.

Min said not too long ago that they named it “morning sickness” because “sickness” would have been too general. That really cracked me up. Faith normally feels worse come night, anyway. She doesn’t seem to take to sour things that most post-pregnant women swear by.

If you have any pointers that might help, do tell.

Remember what I said about my new pets being my training ground for parenting? And where I said the fish were the first step and the hamster being the next step, progressively getting harder?

I take that back. Fish are very enigmatic.

We used to have eleven neon tetras, along with other fish in the tank. Yesterday we saw one swimming weird. Today he seemed miraculously healed. Or rather, there wasn’t any weird-swimming fish to be found in our tank. A quick demonstration of basic arithmetic concluded that we now had seven neon tetras. There were no remains and no floating fish, but we had somehow managed to lose four of them.

In the other tank that held two redeye (no scientific names at the local petstore), only one was left. Again, absolutely no sign of the other having ever existed.

We are baffled. Much as I would like this to be my foray into being an illustionist, the last thing I need is a missing baby.

The hunt for red eye (and neon tetras) continue.

Having children lowers your IQ. It’s not your parents’ fault.

It’s not my fault.

When Vernon, Boon Ping, Jonathan and baby Benjamin moved to the States last month, they left us two tanks of freshwater fish and a bag of maternity clothes. Faith was already pregnant then, but we didn’t know.

It began a routine of Saturday fish-tank cleaning and many trips to the pet shop to buy aquatic plants and knick-knacks to decorate the tank. It was a lesson in commitment; the very first step.

It was Teachers’ Day two days ago and Faith was the recipient of a very generous student who gave her a small hamster. It came in a small disposable cup layered with sawdust.

We spent $120 yesterday buying the most spiffy cage, food, toys, bath powder and sawdust. We swelled (ok I swelled) with pride that we were giving Squeaky (we named her after she squeaked) the best.

I stayed up till 2am trying to show Squeaky the ins-and-outs of her new apartment. It features a Penthouse powder bathroom and neon green wheel that actually rotated round on the horizontal plane as well as the vertical. I just had to give Squeaky directions to the amenities.