Baby: November 2007 Archives

The moment we landed Faith had to rush off for Tom and Dawn’s wedding. We decided to have Anne sit out the wedding as she wasn’t 100%. It was the considerate thing to do as there were other kids at the wedding who might contract whatever she was having.

It’s been forever since I’ve explored a new place with a companion in tow. When Min came to Tucson, I’ve had already been there a year. When I visited Min in New York earlier this year, she’d already been there a while. So here we were, Anne and I, discovering Auckland for ourselves.

Thank God she was amenable to the idea of sitting in her pram. Carrying her would have torn my arms off, especially now that she weighs a hefty 11kg. We set out twice that day - the room at the hotel was a little too boring and you could only watch so many re-runs of Barney, even for Anne.

We walked around downtown a bit, then found a pram-friendly way into Albert Park. Anne was asleep by now, but I was really enjoying the park. The foliage was a little more “raw” than Singapore’s Botanical Gardens. Trees were allowed to grow low-hanging branches which made for great climbing. It also helped that the weather was a lot cooler and less humid. The air was nice and crisp. The kiddo was asleep.

Oh yeah. It was here I realised why people buy those $400 prams - the ones that have inflatable tires, suspension systems and all that. The inclines in Auckland are crazy steep, the pathways not always baby-butt smooth. Anne’s Sungei-road pram held its own, but only because Anne was almost totally comatose.

Tomorrow night we’ll be flying to New Zealand to attend Tom and Dawn’s Wedding. It’ll be Anne’s first time on a plane. There’s that little apprehension - like a roller coaster at the apex of its tracks - probably due to the fact we’re facing another new, unknown experience.

Thing is, Anne and I went down with the flu last night, and the prospect of flying ill is more scary than exciting.

Keep us in prayer, yah?

Practically everyone is predicting the coming baby to be a boy, simply because Faith’s pregnancy this time round brings about very different “symptoms”. “Oh it must be a boy…” goes the chime. Just because I’ve the rebellious streak in me, I’m going to say the baby’s a girl.

The scan isn’t until December, but I read somewhere that the father decides the gender of the baby. So here I am, deciding. Girl.

Faith and I were sitting around the other day thinking of baby names, as most expecting parents are wont to do. If you haven’t already guessed, we like short names, simple ones. Where many kids now sport frankensteined names like Shauntinice, we’d like to give our kids a head-start by having them be the first in class to know how to spell their name.

For almost all of Faith’s childhood, I remember adults coming up to her and asking “so where’s hope?”, an overused har-har on the clichéd Christian phrase “Faith, Hope and Love”. Faith’s sister happens to have the word “love” in her Chinese name, so all hope is lost.

If we named the next kiddo Hope, what of Anne?

“Faith Anne Hope”. Heh.

Anne’s first public performance.

There she was, in her little red boots and carrying her little red umbrella. She looked shell-shocked that unlike previous rehearsals, a full-house sat before the small group of performers. At least 2 dozen image capturing devices were pointed at the kids.

The music came on and it took a while for the kids to realise that it was the cue to perform what they’ve practiced the last few weeks. A few get into the groove, the others see their more alert classmates and follow suit. Anne holds the umbrella firmly over her head, not swaying it like the rest, possibly because we’ve always told her to “hold it properly so no one would get wet”.

Just as she decides to get into gear, she catches sight of us and begins pointing. Forget the actions, Mummy and Daddy are here. She smiles radiantly, still pointing. She turns to the nearest classmate and begins to tell her, rather loudly, that Mummy and Daddy are here. Faith and I can barely hold our cameras still, half embarassed that our daughter, who stood stage centre, was destroying all efforts at putting up a synchronised performance. We were also immensely proud that she stood a distance from us, her very own person, acknowledging our presence.

And that our presence made her smile.

This is the first time I’ve ever been to Anne’s school. Even as I type this I’m apalled at my lack of involvement in such a critical area of her life. I can name her friends - only because we have her class photo and Anne waxes lyrical about each and every one of them. Whether they cried today; or who didn’t want to share his or her toys.

Have I spent too much time at work?

Will I have time for her when #2 comes around? It becomes clear to me that there’s a lot less sand in the hourglass, and I do not have to wait till she’s 21 to lose my little girl.

It’s an odd feeling watching her grow and come into her own, and suddenly realising she’s growing up too quickly.

How independent is she? Faith and I discovered that one of her toenails was almost pulled off in those little red boots. And she kept smiling through it all.

And pointing.

Faith told me that when I left the house last night to play ball, Anne went to the front door, crestfallen that I had left without her. She then started to cry silently. When she went to bed she broke into sobbing “I want Daddy”.

I came home late, oblivious to what had transpired when I was away.

Anne seemed to be having problems sleeping, endlessly tossing and turning. When I finally got to bed at two, the little girl sat straight up, looked in my direction and said “Daddy come home”. Besides the obvious need to teach her proper grammar, I realized how needed I was in her life, and although we sometimes think the kiddos are distracted enough for us to slink away to our own activities, being a parent is a full-time, all-the-time commitment. I’m not saying that I’ll never play ball again, but I felt that I should have stayed.