Almost finished packing. Yes, we are finally going off for a vacation, an almost real vacation that is further then KL.

I have been busy preparing stuff to bring for the past few days. Oversea trips used to be so easy, just packed up 2 hours before leaving for airport, leaving behind all the worries after boarding. With a kid around, there are so many things to prepare and worry about.

All the shopping was done for her. I am worried about food, about her diaper, about the weather. So I bought jar food, disposable bibs, medicine, and even a poncho. I would have secretly packed a 48 pieces Mamy Poko into my backpack if James didn’t catch me doing so. It is such a pain that I have to scout for diapers and baby food while on holiday, especially so when the only few words I could say is bonjour, au revoir and merci beaucoup. Oh, I also managed to learn to pronounce “croissant” the correct way, heh. Yauyau shall eat that for all her meals if I am not able to find suitable food for her.

I have not been for a decent holiday for two years, which makes me very excited towards this trip. I know I am going to regret bringing the kid along the minute I reach the airport, but I will try my very best to relax and take things easy so as to enjoy myself. Because of the kid, we shall mainly be visiting gardens, châteaux and churches, cutting out the museums and shopping malls. Well, we will see how it goes, haven’t really plan any itineraries yet.

What’s with the phone that attracts the kids so dearly? Is it the buttons, the lights or the fact that we adults use it too often? I was at Takashimaya the other day, and saw one baby happily playing with the mobile phone in the stroller while the mom happily shopped around without any stress. That was what I would do too, shove the kid my hand phone if she starts crying and I need to pacify her immediately. If the hand phone fails to distract her, I guess nothing else would (well, except for milk milk, which I can’t simply pull up my blouse and bear it all in public with a wailing kid attracting so much attention).

I have bought a plastic toy hand phone too. This fake is to distract her from the real ones we are using and to prevent them from early retirement. It has buttons and makes all kinds of funny sounds when you press them, just like the real one, and much more fanciful. But somehow, children could differentiate it from the authentic ones. Maybe because they don’t see us talking into the fakies, so they don’t deserve so much affection.

I have also noticed that Yauyau have been very sensitive to the ringing tones lately. When the phone rings or the beep beep sound for SMS is heard, she becomes excited and points towards the phone. She will make sure someone answer the phone. Some kind of routine and order, I guess.

Finally, I must really apologise to one of my ex-colleague, Able. His phone entry happens to be the first on my list, and because of that, Yauyau has been making numerous phone calls to him. I have cancelled many of her attempts to call Able, but I am sure some made through. I have not received any complaints from Able yet. I have not keep in touch with him for years. Maybe he has changed his number, maybe he decided to ignore this number. Hopefully he didn’t imagine me as some prankster or a desperate (married) woman trying to contact him.

Sunday blues always sets in whenever Indar (the helper) has her Sunday off. I have to prepare meals, but the fridge is empty. I want to take a nap, but the kid keeps pestering me. I want to tidy up the house, but the kid mess it up right after I have done a task. Maybe we should bring her out somewhere so time will pass faster, but it is either raining or too crowded everywhere.

Yesterday was another bad Sunday, bad because we almost have improper meals and junk food for the whole family. Poor Yauyau, she had her (yummy) taste of junk food because of my laziness. The fridge had nothing except a couple of eggs, maize and milk. It was raining very heavily, so we decided not to go out for lunch. Since the kid is crazy over maize, she shall have steam egg and corn for lunch. Seems rather unourishing, but I think she enjoyed it more then the usual porridge.

We were at Swenson’s for dinner. I order an omelet kid’s meal for her, the omelets comes with fries and apple juice. She ate the omelets like a good girl until we gave her a fries. She shut her eyes and mouth tight tight, turned and shake her head disapprovingly when I tried to feed her more eggs. She only wanted the fries.

That’s our junk food day. No more junkie food for her in future until she has had her proper meals. Maybe shouldn’t offer her any at all.

It was a perfect morning with excellent weather on Thursday! We were all worried another rain will spoil the fun, but the God was kind to us. The sky was overcast; another heavy downpour seemed to be brewing. But there was no rain, and no sun. Just the right weather to bring the kids to botanical garden.

The playgroup children had a wonderful morning there running on the grass, chasing after balls and bubbles. Most of them are a bunch of kids deprived of space.

There were many groups of children there. We saw three big groups of kids from child care centres and kindergarten running across the field like a platoon of charging army. You know, when children run, they must scream, like bats sending screeches to navigate their way.

There were also many mommies bringing their little children out for a stroll in the garden. Strangely, most of them were Caucasians or Japanese, very few local moms. Why is this so? Are local moms too caught up with housework or too preoccupied with other business? Or is it the weather? Do we prefer indoors, like shopping malls, more then outdoor? Or are we just lazy to bring the kids out?

The father is away again. I think the kid is rather disappointed not to be able to see her father every night after we returned from grandpa’s place. She goes ” papa papa” and points towards the room like what she has been doing everyday, then expecting the familiar face to pop out, but has been unable to get any respond.

Well, that is like about 3 minutes of missing the dad and everything will be back to normal.

I find that the older she gets, the more attention she needs from us. The TV used to be the ultimate babysitter when I need to get her attention off me. Then it became less effective, she would come looking for me after a while. The TV was still capable of capturing her attention once I sat her in front of it. Now it is almost useless, just impossible to just sit her in front of a 30min show without me staying really nearby. I must stay by her side; else she will come pulling my hands, insisting that I follow her. Luckily she doesn’t insist that I must focus on the show, thus I could catch up on some reading.

A lot of hand pulling, body pushing lately from her for the past month too. We have become her extension, her special help to accomplish her tasks. Whenever she came looking for me and pulling my hands, I am 100% sure something is going on. Either the children show she was watching was interrupted by some error message, the toy she was playing has ended up in some unreachable corners, or simply because she wanted me to read her something.

And tots can be very persistent; they won’t stop pestering you unless you accede to their request. But I am mostly happy to attend to her need. I am happy to see this self awareness development, and am glad that she is able to see us as partners to get things done. It is certainly a leap forward from giving up easily when daunted by a problem, or staying still with a clueless expression when her toys disappeared.

Like any school outing, we have to submit this mandatory report after attending the event. This is especially so when Straits Time said in bold that the event was a big YAWN, and also because the kid happened to be the youngest and probably the only one or two toddler there.

The Whole Room To Ourselves

Hey, the organiser said the other mommies sabo them and never turned up. Ok lah, to be fair, no one really said they were attending, except me. I did post an announcement on the Asia Parents forum, but that post never got published. Wondered why!

Anyway, as promised, we checked ourselves into a rather big and comfy nursery room. The volunteer there were really helpful. Upon seeing me with the kid and stroller, one of them quickly offered help and sent me up to the designated room. We almost have the whole upper level to ourselves if not for the presence of the helpers and the DXO staff. It was a great place to be at, much better then sitting downstairs on the usual chair. Here we have got all kinds of comfy sofas and walking space.

Oh yes, snack was served immediately to prevent the kid from getting too excited.

Fighting For Attention

We have got the best view…well almost, we could see the top of all the heads at the main area. I think the kid was rather distracting when she walked to and fro from the glass panel trying to act cute. Well, the event wasn’t some serious no nonsense conference, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

The Famous

The famous people got surrounded by the press. Eh, one of the reporters from NP also approached me. Well, I supposed she wasn’t fast enough to grab those well known blogger and thus started eyeing on those odd one out, like the one tugging a kid along.

The back channel IRC with jokes cracking the crowd when the topic got too dry. More bloggers should have brought along their notebooks to further spice up the chat. I missed all the jokes, because the kid loved the room so much and refuse to let me go near the TV screening the IRC. This is one of the prices I paid to bring her along.

Fringe Activities

Hon Chong brought along some really neat tanks and helicopters and painstakingly setting up a mini “terrain” for some tanks fight. Well, at least something to keep the big kids occupied during the tea break.

And finally the belly good belly dancers performance. Cool! If not for my horrendous looking stretch mark, I would like to learn too.

So? How Was It?

Did I enjoy myself? Ok lash, not too bad. I couldn’t comment much, I was there physically, but wasn’t really attending it. I spent more time and effort chasing after the child and making her stay still then listening to the panels. And also, the speaker inside the room wasn’t working, so I couldn’t hear properly from inside. It was very clear outside the room, but the kid preferred to hide herself in the room.

I can see that the organiser put in a lot of effort to make this event a success. Just looked at them, they all looked so tired and in desperate need of a good rest. Thank goodness, everything went smoothly as planned.

So, was it really a boring as some people put it. I would say it wasn’t as colourful as I have expected. Where were the preachers and those opinionated bloggers? Where were those jokers and cynical ones? Well, I guess we Singaporean are after all a more reserve lot and watch our tongue before strangers, just in case we break the law, or loose our precious face saying the wrong thing. Perhaps a pre event cocktail would help break the ice and liven up the atmosphere.

I didn’t read the straits time article, so I didn’t really know what the YAWN was about. But there is something I am pretty sure, reporters and bloggers don’t see eye to eye to each other. For non bloggers, non blogs readers, or clueless about blogs people, the event should be a dull one. The technology and law tracks were rather informative but I don’t think they would appeal to non bloggers, or non blogging enthusiasts. I am quite sure some of the reporters present weren’t into blogging at all, some of them probably were clueless about it, so it is no wonder they would say it is a big YAWN. One issue with local reporters I have is, they should seriously do their homework before embarking on their assignments. It is really embarrassing (and irritating) to answer some very obvious questions that everyone knows except the reporter (btw, I am not refering to the NP reporter that talked to me).

I didn’t take any photos with the others. Mummy bloggers are only interested in taking photos of their kids. I didn’t really talk to the others bloggers too, because I don’t read widely, so just in case I asked some lame questions like some reporters did. I did have a good chat with some youngsters - 3 O levels students from Presbyterian High and 1 A level guy from CJC. I am impressed that some of our teenagers nowadays are really outspoken and confident when meeting strangers. But too bad, one of them has shut down his blog and the other two refuse to let me have the urls to their site.

Additional perks I got from the event, for the first time in life, I saw the parachutes and the fireworks right above me! Spectacular, though it is only for a few minutes. Now I understand why people would wait for a few hours at some sardine packed place just to watch the fireworks display. The colours, the boom boom sound and the vibration you feel from the explosion of the thousands colours is awesome!

Do they have a word for that in English? Wait, I think I found something close, temper tantrums! I have seen that from Alice my ex-colleague’s son Daniel last year. It was a sight then; Daniel just acted up suddenly and threw himself on the floor and started sobbing, waving his hands and kicking his legs. Alice was cool. She declared him the Oscar award best actor and ignored him. Sure enough, he stopped after no one gave him a damn.

My turn now! A few months ago, her strategy to defy my instruction to move on was to plaster her bums onto the floor until I scooped her up. Brilliant move, 以不变应万变, that’s what I called it. I can handle that pretty well, no big deal. But she has improvised her tactics lately and started blackmailing me by lying on the floor at supermarkets and shopping malls. It is a quiet defiance, she usually doesn’t cry or scream, just lie there, face down, and refuse to budge. It is quite embarrassing sometime, when the others look on with an amused look. But I guess most of them, especially the parents, can empathies with me.

Words I gotten from experience parents: (within a safe environment that no one is going to get hurt) if it is at home, just ignore her and walk away, she cannot function without an audience. If out of home, activate our protective shield against embarrassment, stay nearby and let her continue her show until she gets tired of it and stand up on her own.

Works fine so far. But I can’t help calling her a 无赖.

Bloggers.SG, the bloggercon this coming Saturday at DXO, any other blogging parents showing up? I didn’t thought of bringing this up until caddy’s mum reminded me about it.

I always thought blogging parents might not really be interested in attending. It is not a parenting seminar. No babies crawling competition. No push carts selling children clothing or educational toys. No free goodies bags containing free diaper, formula sample or gym class vouchers. They said that there will be nice Bloggers.SG t-shirt on sale, might just be able to fetch a good price at eBay 15 years later when the kid grows up. 15 years is too long, furthermore, we only want baby size tees. Oh yes, we can meet up some of the famous bloggers. But then, the only true star and idol of ours is our very own kid, we don’t need to bring our very own kid to DXO to meet them. Ok, there is no registration fee and tea will be provided! Tell me, do they cater for baby food too?

Despite of all the above, I am still very keen to attend. Just the kaypoh side of me, curious to find out what is going on, to get out of the house, snap some pictures and make some new friends. I heard that there is a nice private room on the upper level of DXO that overlook the ground floor. If we manage to “chop” that place and make it into a cry room for parents lugging children along, then attending the event won’t be stressful anymore. Let’s make an appointment at the cry room, ok?

UPDATE: The organiser welcomes the idea, so I take it that we could have a cry room for parents with kids! So, don’t have to worry about wailing babies or little monkeys hoping around anymore, the cry room will be able to contain all the sound while we enjoy the various session from there.

If I am not wrong, the kid has acquired a new word today. I am happy that I can finally add another entry to her limited list of known words, but that new word also spell trouble to me. Oh, the word I am talking about isn’t “trouble”, that would probably be too advanced for her. She is into the word “NO” today.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that “no” will be one of the kids first words. We adults everything also “no” to them. When they stand too near the TV, we say “no”. Playing with some paperbacks - “no”. Pulling tissues - “no”. Trying to grab some chips from us, again “no”. I wonder if I have overused the word “no” and discouraged her from wanting to try out new things.

Anyway, I am observing if she is going to make use of this newly learnt powerful word and get things done her way. The novelty is still around, and I can still think that it is again cute and amusing to see children say “no no no” while shaking their heads to reject something. But what if she starts using it like a vengeance and says “no” to everything I would like her to do? Wah, that would be a war that require some strategic planning. I can visualize her shooting “no no no” out of her mouth like some missiles aiming at me. Need to devise some protective shield against the raid and can’t let the “no” become her weapon.

And I also wonder, should I listen to her seriously when she says “no”, or should I just brush it aside and do what I think is best accordingly? Acceding to her protest might just spoils her and nuture her defiance, while ignoring her voice might leave an impression that her own wish or view are not important. Again, tough.