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| it's been ages since i last wrote anything. been really busy just living and going thru each day with amazement at the wabbits progress to actually wanna blog. but hey...i suddenly got the bug again. anyhoo...we've been spending a lot of time visiting the wabbit grandparents recently and i got to thinking about how they were as our parents. all those stories of dad's unleashing his fury with a belt or mum's locking daughters out of the house when she didn't wanna come home came flooding back.
when i was growing up, i'm pretty sure that none of the parents i
knew grappled with the 'good cop, bad cop' dilemmas of modern-day
parenting.
in my neighborhood, everyone's dad was the bad cop. moms, on the
other hand, were always a pushover, most of the time at least. i knew of a few mums who were really scary but generally. the only time moms were scary was
when they threatened to rat you out and tell your dad when you did
something wrong. for a little kid, the scariest words in the english
language have got to be, 'wait until your father
gets home! you're going to be in big trouble then, mister!'
when you're only 6 years old and someone is calling you "mister,"
it's a pretty safe bet that you're very close to getting some zebra lines (as we liked to call them back then) or have a pretty sore ass.
sitting alone in my room like a death row inmate waiting for my
father to come home, i'd always contemplate how i could make a break
for it. would god finally hear my prayers? would all those sundays of sunday school amount to anything? should i run away? how would I survive? where could i run to? how far could I make
it with only my smelly pillow and a hobo styled handkerchief wrapped up and tied to a stick? dammit, i needed a reference guide. where the hell was my
copy of 'dick and jane go up the hill' when i
needed it? there's tht well they talked about up on some hill. maybe i can go live there. and nobody would find me and then they'd all be sorry that i was gone and they'd wish that they hadn't wanted to scold me and they'd all wish i was home and...
what the hell was i talking about again? oh yeah...good cop/bad cop. i was raised in a time when kids were 'seen not heard' and i think it'll be hard to
rise above that family history at times. of course, now my dad is all
easy going and spoils my kid. i can imagine him letting the lil one get away with all the stuff
that got me in deep trouble. i'm suddenly imagining that his tactics will be too harsh for my son!
now,
we often hear about the many trials and tribulations of the modern-day
parent. it's become apparent that no serious discussion of parenting
today is complete unless we talk about the work/life balance, the emergence of stay-at-home-dads, or the changing gender roles among
today's parents.
heh, i think it's great that these discussions are taking place (no really, i do). we're so darn enlightened, aren't we?
but to tell you the truth? you want to know my REAL problem right now?
i don't want to be bad cop!
it's not that I don't want to be a disciplinarian when it comes to
the wabbit. i'm a firm believer in discipline, although i may not have much of it myself, and there's no way in
hell that I'm going to raise a spoiled child. it's just that i'd much
rather be "mr. fun guy." i think i'd hate being the bad cop. this may well be all too premature you might think. "the wabbit is only 6 mths and a few weeks old. why bother yourself with these things now? just enjoy him growing up..."
but I realize that it's not fair to the ling for her to be the bad
cop all the time so i'm perfectly willing to share the responsibilities also. i can imagine it's easy to go REAL bad cop... like, corrupt
shake-down cop, like this-city-block-is-my-turf-and-you-will-pay-any-price-i-demand-for-my-protection
cop, especially to those feral things that are let loose at malls and hypermarts. but i think the main thing is to keep each other in check. like when i get all bad-ass, i would hope that the ling will look at me like
"dei! he's only 6mths old. you're doing it again." and i'll know i need to
back the truck up.
but hey...you're right...i think i'll just chill and not worry about it till the time comes. at least i know i have the daddy voice. or i could always fall back on the 'your mother told you to...'
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| if there's a single common refrain among the plethora of parenting aphorisms, it's that time flies. and while you can find many pearls of wisdom about the relativity of time, nothing ever quite prepares you for the acceleration of time that you experience after becoming a parent.
right now, the wabbit is fast approaching his first month.
and I have to tell you, my friends, that ever since I became a father 3 weeks and a day ago, time has been flying faster for me than the half-life of eva longoria's acting career.
honestly, the passing of time has been blowing my mind lately. in my 34 years on this planet, i'm pretty sure that there are entire 3 week periods that have either completely vanished from my memory or can adequately be summed up by the phrase 'fun party, work sucked, broke up with her, took a vacation.'
and before you know it, the wabbit will become a teenager. i can't even begin to imagine how one would deal with it. for those of you who might have teenagers, i would think that the dilemma of lost time is even more shocking. one day, you've got a little prince who likes matchbox and thinks his daddy is the greatest thing in the entire world. next thing you know, he's uploading photos of his new polynesian tattoo(s) on his MySpace/Friendster/Multiply/Hi5/Whatever account and is getting so many piercings that you think marilyn manson might even be concerned. holy crap! where's dr. emmet brown and his magic delorean when you need him?
so yeah...time is definitely flying for me here. and while I'm less concerned about what this means for my own sense of mortality, i'm also determined not to worry about what the future brings.
because right now? i've still got a little wabbit who does nowt more than eat, sleep, poo and hopefully, thinks his daddy is the greatest thing in the entire world.
besides, who's got time to worry when there are people to wait on you hand and foot?
cry + frantic rushing around to feed = happy wabbit
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| urgh, after tomorrow, i go back to work. it's been a blissful 2 weeks. well...as blissful as having a child can be. but it's been a different kinda hectic.
the 3 hourly feedings. the rushing to the cot everytime the wabbit screams (he really sounds like a dinosaur of sorts - as pointed out by auntie feather) it has been hectic and the lack of sleep has been catching up. the first few days, waking up to feed him wasn't that much of a prob. but now...what the hell...i was so tired last nite i slept before 11 (a record for me) and this morning aroudn 9, when he was screaming his lil lungs out to be fed, i slept right through that as well. even with him lying on the bed next to me.
but today was the wabbits first official trip out of the home. no, the trip to the paedeatrician the other day doesn't count. doctors visits are not trips. today, we took the wabbit to a mothers day brunch at the marco polo. the dim sum was goose! and he was on his best behaiviour.
but anyways...the wabbit is starting to move around a lot more nowadays. he's trying to raise his head, move his arms around, grab stuff. and he's suprisingly strong.
and eventually, in every baby's life, i am certain that they must begin to learn about the scientific principles that are the fabric of our existence. for the wabbit, "eventually" is this week, and that principle is gravity. gravity is a force of attraction between two bodies that have mass, illustrated as follows:
g X m1 X m2
------------------ = fgravity
r2
in this illustration, the wabbit is one of those bodies (m1), and the other is my shoulder (m2). by falling forwards onto me (g) from a seated position, our little wabbit has proven that gravity exists...over and over and over. however, still in his infancy, he has not yet connected that:
falling forwards/backwards = head hitting collarbone/hard object = ouchie! = tears (from child and parents alike)
tomorrow's lesson: pavlovian conditioning.
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| it's 0122 and am dog tired. have been up since 6am for the early morning feeding. the ling and i have come to the agreement that i do the 6 and 9am feedings. i just can't wake up to do the 3am one. it has something to do with my sleep cycles. i can't wake up at odd hours. if i sleep at 1, theoretcially, i could wake up at 3 as it's been only 2 hours. but if i sleep at 2, i won't be able to for some reason. well..i could, but i'd be so sleepy that i wouldn't be able to function properly.
so...my sleep patterns have to be even numbered hours.
anyhoo...i was supposed to pop out for a drink tonight but i just couldn't make it. i could sell you some drama about how, over the past 24 hours, i've had a string of jack bauer-esque calamities befall me. the wabbit had to have his daily exposure to the sun due to his jaundice. but since there was hardly any sun today, i had to drive him around chasing whatever little sunlight there was to be found. the dogs dug thier way underneath the fence AGAIN and this time their dude-where's-my-car inspired adventure took them under our neighbor's (she being a Grumpy Woman of Indeterminate Age) fence, and the GWOIA called THE COPS. and after dealing with all that...i was just to knackered to do anything else. AND i have a feeding schedule to adhere to.
so...why am i still up at 1 something in the morning? well...i just did the 1230 feeding. and after all that action, i'm quite awake now. so...
was just having a convo about circumcision earlier. we were considering it as one of the lings gal pals kept pushing us to do it as she had it done to her little boy and convinced her big boy to do it too. yes, she's quite the salesperson.
she had come round earlier and asked us again if we were gonna cut the wabbit. many reasons were thrown around about like how it's more hygenic and all. but i've heard (and from a reliable source close to the medical industry) that that's been disproved. then, to help sell it even more, the friend started to say how easy it is nowadays. just 3 cuts and u can walk away from it. no more of that lying around for a week in a sarong suspended by string from the ceiling.
yeah. right. like my newborn can walk.
i can imagine if our little boy was in hospital (touch wood, sprinkle salt and all that other superstitious mumbo jumbo) later in his life and he encounterd another little boy...the convo would prolly go something like this:
other boy: what are you in for?
wabbit: i'm here to get my tonsils out and I'm nervous.
other boy: you've got nothing to worry about! i had that done when i was four. they put you to sleep and when you wake up they give you lots of ice cream. it's a breeze!
wabbit: well what are you here for?
other boy: a circumcision.
wabbit: oh shit! i had that done when i was born and i couldn't walk for a year!
i dunno really...i guess i'm still undecided...maybe we'll just let the wabbti decide when he's older. at the end of the day, if he knows how to clean himself, i'm sure it'll be fine...besides...to whom will it benefit the most? his future girlfriends who have something against kissing and public toilets i suppose. but if he has good grooming habits, i'm sure he'll be fine.
all this reminds me of a joke:
there was a poor kid born without eyelids. they had to use his foreskin.
turns out he was cockeyed.
anyhoo, what do y'all think? | | |
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