Chubs

Isaac got his 6-in-1 jab last Friday and it was a family affair. The Mrs and I took our first ever child care leave and my parents came along too.

Actually he was scheduled to have the jab when he turned 3 months old but according to Dr B, it is alright to leave it to slightly later. Her reasoning was, this way he will be a happier and stronger baby too.

So we decided to bring him in when at 3 and half months and we did it on a Friday so that in case he does not feel well for the next day or 2 at least it was the weekend and we can care for him ourselves.

Throughout the morning I have been preparing him for the jab, telling him he must be a brave boy and will use my index finger to poke him in the arm as if he was getting a jab. This goes to show that I was in fact an inexperience dad because it was only in the consultation room that I learned he will be jabbed in his thigh and not his arm. So much for preparing him huh?!?!

While waiting he got hungry but we decided to hold off his feeding because according to the nurses there were babies who got distracted by the feeding and it helped a great deal when they were jabbed. So we decided to wait till he was about to be jabbed before we fed him.

Isaac was oblivious to the children around him and was pretty cranky as his turn drew nearer but do not mistaken as it was due to his hunger rather than the anxiousness for the jab.

Finally it was his turn and the first thing Dr B said when she saw him was "Wa! Chubby eh?!" The Mrs and I were like "Huh?! Chubby?! Really?!" I think she saw other expressions because she went on to explain that he is on the chubbier side but he's not like fat or anything.

You must be wondering Isaac's weight right? Well, let me tell you, he weighed in at an impressive .................. 6.25kg only!! Actually this is pretty normal for a 3.5 month old baby right?

So while the nurse was preparing the concoction I started to feed him. Oh I forgot to mention that the Mrs had already ruled herself out of holding him during the jab. It was the same with the blood test for the jaundice months ago. Soon the nurses came in with the syringe and needle.

What happened next I believe will remain very vivid for many many moons to come! One moment he was all innocent and drinking his milk happily and when the needle went in, I swear I could feel his muscle contract, his face went all red, his mouth opened really wide to release the milk bottle and the loudest wail came next. I could have sworn the patients in Gleneagles heard it (we're at Mt E by the way). Think I have to take part of the blame for preparing him wrongly. Maybe he was really expecting the needle to hit him in the arm and was caught offguard.

For one who did not want to hold him during the jab, the Mrs strangely enough had the courage to want to film the process. Unfortunately for her Dr B was so quick that the whole injection was done in seconds and all that the Mrs managed to capture was his wailing.

So being a forgiving baby that he is, it took him only a few minutes to calm down and to forgive his "betraying" parents and went back to his milk.

On the subject of milk and chubbiness, Isaac is on 4 feeds a day and each time is 7 ounces or 210ml. That works out to be 840ml per day. Is that too much by your standard?

Since a picture says a thousand words, I will leave you with a few picture of our Chubs here:

You can compare this with the earlier picture under the post, Milk so see his weight gained.

Can still see a bit of a chin hence not classified as fat yet!

As if not enough milk already?!

This was thrown in to show you the uglier side of him. Check out the double chin.

My Superman impersonation, only upside down.

Hmmmmm..... I wonder........

Finally, the Mrs - revealed! Our family portrait!

For some strange reason unknown even to me, this is my favourite picture!

School

A couple of weeks back the Mrs asked me totally out of the blue where I intend to send Isaac to for his education. Honestly, that question caught me off guard. I was still enjoying his cooing and did not for one second stop to think about where he will be getting his education.

This would not have been a problem if I had come from a reputable private school where they welcome children of alumni. The public school which I came from was torn down many years back to make way for a highway (I'm not kidding).

If Baby turned out to be Kate instead of Isaac then we will not have to think about this too because she will be simply be sent to MGS where the Mrs studied.

Funny enough shortly after the Mrs posted the question to me, we had dinner with Mike and Kat and this same topic somehow came up again. They are sort of facing the same problem as us but only their child is not born yet. Mike too came from a public primary as well as secondary school. If they end up having a daughter they will be saved from this issue too because she will go to her mum's school which is Cedar Girls.

I have always told the Mrs when she was still pregnant then that she has to remind me not to turn into 1) the Kiasu type of parents and 2) the kind of irritating friends that once they have children of their own will go around urging others to have one too.

Reason for number 1 is pretty obvious I guess. Amid all these competitions I would still like Isaac to have an enjoyable childhood. Plus both the Mrs and I are not myopic so we would prefer for Isaac to continue this good fortune. I'm sure you'll agree with me that myopia is a very serious issue with our children these days.

As for number 2, we had a very hard time trying to conceive Isaac and along the way we get so many people coming up to us and ask "oh how come you guys are not trying?", "don't you want kids?", "you're not getting any younger you know, you should start planning now!". Usually we will brush them off by telling them "Yeah, we're trying" or my personal favourite "You'll be the first to know ok? I promised!" So I will not allow myself to turn into one of them in case this poor couple, like us have been trying unsuccessfully for a while. No need to pile on additional pressure right?

I was a little amazed and wondered why on earth the Mrs would bring up primary school when we were still trying to get Isaac to get off his night feed (oh he is off now by the way). Personally I am still trying to get him to say “Pa Pa” as his first words so how did primary school suddenly get into the picture?

Lately I realised that while I thought the Mrs is being Kiasu for thinking and planning so many years ahead, there are others who are already in the queue to send their kids who are no older that Isaac now, to some prestigious pre-nursery?!?! I’m sorry if you are amongst them and if I had offended you but in the queue?!?!?!?! Seriously?!?!?! I mean what planet am I on or maybe which planet did you come from?!?!?!

Mike summed it up pretty nicely for himself when he said he will try and give his kid a better opportunity within reasonable means of course. He just want to give her (noticed recently that websites always refer to babies as her) a slightly better start and the rest is up to her.

My criteria is actually pretty simple, this school (public or private) should be relatively reputable for the right reasons of course and it should ideally have an affiliated secondary school. An important condition is this school must not be one of those money grabbing ones where parents can simply donate a certain (usually rather obscene) sum and get their kids in. I feel very strongly that a school should at the end of the day be a place where children’s' education takes top priority. I would like to send Isaac to a school with integrity. Having said that I probably cannot afford all the fund raising that these schools usually organise every year anyway so better avoid them altogether.

While we are still studying the schools, I was posted another question. Should we consider sending Isaac to Shichida or Glenn Doman? The verdict is still out on this one. I am seriously not sure if I want Isaac to go through it. I guess we have to do a bit of research on them. Most importantly they have to be fun for Isaac.

By now this whole school issue has gotten much bigger because the Mrs has always wanted to move from our current place so this presents to her the best excuse (er... I mean reason) to move. She was so keen that one morning during the weekend she got up early while Isaac and I were still asleep to work on school selection. The plan is we can work on the condo around the area once we have identified the school that we would like to send Isaac to.

Let’s leave the house issue for another day.

Four

In the end there were Four!!

This past week had been pretty busy for me hence the lack of posting. See, the Mrs was on leave for the entire week so naturally I will have less time to do any blogging. What made me even busier was we no longer have a maid since last Thursday.

Yes, you read it right! We no longer have a maid! Fast huh?!

What happened was I took leave on Wednesday to spend the entire day with Isaac and the Mrs so we told our maid to just do her stuffs and once she is done she can sleep or watch the TV but she is not to go out. We had to leave a set of keys with her in case there is a fire or any other emergency.

Looking back now we should have guessed something wasn't right because she kept asking us separately what time will we be back. I told her we weren't sure because after all we left home at about 11.30 in the morning and with Isaac out as well who knows when he will be cranky right? So I told her we could have dinner out and then packet something back for her or we could come back and then bring her out for dinner together. What I did not know was just before we left she asked the Mrs again what time will we be back and the Mrs thinking that we will be dining out told her we should be late.

Fortunately for us and unfortunately for her, we were all tired by about 4ish and decided to come home to rest before our game of mah jong at night. So we were home by 5.15pm and you must have guessed by now that she was nowhere to be seen. What pissed me off was also my laundry was left out in the rain and Dino was locked out of his toilet.

The Mrs went to check out our caller id and found out that she had called 3 different numbers shortly after we left and these people also called back. It seemed pretty obvious to me that she was arranging to meet these people.

Anyway she came back, all dolled up I must add, at 7.30pm and all she said was she had to go out and buy a phone card to call home urgently. When questioned how did she walked to the shopping mall and which shop did she buy from she couldn't answer.

Now before you Human Rights Activists protest, she was told specifically she was not to go out and if her story was true then she could have called us before leaving. There was another thing that we were not comfortable with and that was she has this boyfriend in Singapore. We called those numbers that she called looking for her and found out that there is Myanmese guy whom she got to know from her last contract here in Singapore about a year ago.

All along she wasn't getting along well with the Mrs and that is largely due to her bad attitude e.g. she will give us black face for no less than 3 days each time we pointed out (note, not scold) her mistakes. All this while I have been requesting to give her more time as I really do not like to hire and fire so easily. However she has crossed the line this time by leaving our home without saying a word to us. So we did not say much to her the rest of the night and the next morning and promptly drove her back to the agent. As expected she was neither sad nor remorseful. She wasn't at all teary and pleaded for another chance in case you're wondering. All she did show was her usual black face.

As the Mrs did not want to inform her of our decision to dismiss her, we had to pack her stuffs and bring them back (all 5 bags of them) to the agency later that evening. In case you think that I am a bad employer, I drove her all the way to Hougang to her former agent's place on the 3rd day of Lunar New Year to collect her bags of clothes and also for her to reminisce old times with her. I had to go back and fetch her after 3 hours.

Luckily we have never been overly dependent on her when it comes to Isaac so we are coping fine without her. The only drag I have to admit to is the vacuuming and mopping of the floor. Since we have Dino I personally preferred to vacuum on a daily basis or at most once every 2 days.

On the hindsight I am enjoying the time that we are spending as a family without an outsider hanging around. I am secretly hoping that my parents can cope with Isaac without the aid of a maid then I will do away with one.

Before I can finish this post we had already confirmed a new maid. This time a Cantonese speaking one too. Cool right? She will be here after about 2 weeks so I guess we will have to do the nappy changing and showering of Baby for the time being. Frankly I am not complaining and in fact looking forward to it.

Oh, I must also add that according to my BIL's maid, my maid actually told her that she has 2 boyfriends here in Singapore. A Chinese and a Myanmese and in case she (BIL's maid) wants, she can introduce boyfriends to her too! Imagine our shock!! I am almost too embarrassed to face my BIL.

Lastly, if you're wondering why in the end there were Four, I must say you have to be a non-dog lover right?