Baby: January 2006 Archives

A photo-journey.

Hours before the reunion dinner Faith and I felt really cooped up at home and decided to head out to Suntec City. It was quite the gamble - the mall could be exceedingly crowded with people doing last minute shopping or that it would be empty, giving us a little reprieve from the hustle and bustle of city life.

We didn’t expect it to be this empty.

We expected some of the shops to be closed, but not the eating places! After all, what else do Singaporeans do besides eat? And if the eating places are closed, wouldn’t we all lose our national pastime?

Ok, now we were getting a little desperate. We did come here looking for lunch.

We finally found an open Burger King, had our quick bite and took the bus home to rest a bit before the reunion dinner.

It’s Chinese New Year’s again. It used to be a time of collecting money. Those married would have to give little red packets containing token sums of money. These token sums would inevitably be used to determine whether the giver spent his old age at a resort-style retirement home with his great-grandchildren or in a dilapidated hut, all alone.

Giving out these red packets add up to quite a considerable wallop on the pocket. A off-the-cuff equation is as follows:

Impact on wallet = (number of nieces, nephews, young cousins, household pets and plants) x (how close each respective member is to the giver)

If you look at this tradition as a kind of monetary installment for family ties, the cost of a large extended family would probably be the same as a smaller, close-knit family. Having a large, close-knit family would send you to the bank begging for a loan.

This Chinese New Year Faith and I have concocted a solution to this money-losing scheme:

Anne.

After unsuccessfully training her to put her hands together whenever someone says “gongxi, gongxi”, I’ve decided to bring along some sticky tape. Taping both her hands together should achieve the same effect whenever she waves her arms around. This little gesture, accompanied by her good looks, should make any passerby empty their pockets, safe deposit boxes and off-shore bank accounts.

We’re not losing money this year. I repeat: we’re not losing money this year.

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

On Thursday, Anne was down with a fever. Faith and I thought little of it until she threw up thrice at night. At about 2 in the morning we decided to take her to the children’s hospital.

The roads were empty, and you’d expect the children’s hospital to be quite desolate at that time of night. When the sliding doors open, it felt like we were walking into Disneyland. There were children everywhere, usuallly accompanied by at least one very tired looking adult. Most of the kids looked worse for the wear, some lying down on the seats with their heads propped on the lap of their fathers. Others were asleep in their mothers’ arms. Then there was Anne.

Even with a relatively high fever, this little sparkplug was still the life of the party. She was busy looking around at her fallen (asleep) comrades, occasionally waving her plump little arm vigorously. With so much visual stimulation, she didn’t look like she was about to sleep. It didn’t seem like she needed any, despite having been up all this time.

The doctor required a urine sample, so we sat around waiting for Anne to do her thing in some plastic contraption that looked like a used condom tucked into her diaper. We checked it every five minutes, hoping for rain to fall so we could have the diagnosis and head home.

About two hours passed and the drought continued. We went in to see the doctor to tell him we had given up waiting. He said the probability of Anne having a urinary tract infection was small, then gave us instructions on how to collect a urine sample from her at home if we wanted to bring it in for testing in the morning.

“You have to observe her and wait for her to pee. Then you need to use this sterilised container and collect it mid-stream. You don’t want the pee that comes out first. You have to wait a while.”

I know this guy works with kids on a day to day basis, but does he have any idea how hard that is? Faith and I kinda laughed it off and said we’d observe her. The catching urine in mid-air thing was above and beyond our hand-eye coordination.

Anne’s still running a temperature and is a little crankier at times, but generally fine. Thank you for all your prayers and text messages. You guys rock.

Anne’s featured on a two-page spread in the January issue of Young Parents magazine. Next stop: Letterman or Oprah.

You heard it here first.