Is life enough?

Somehow I find myself sulking at the lack of parties and events to head to this Christmas. There seems no point going with a toddler that is hell bent on wanting to touch/break every Christmas decoration, climbing stairs that she's not good at coming down on and walking straight into dangerous paths. The stress of it all is just too great. Plus I have been the sole care giver the past few weeks as her dad has been getting slammed at work. I don't mind the whole not having to make dinner part so I can just focus on playing with and educating her, but it still gets a bit much you know? I crave the companionship of good girlfriends. A laugh, a drink, a good girly bonding activity.

I miss my girlfriends. I miss my old life. Motherhood is not what the world cut it out to be. Yes it is rewarding seeing the world from her eyes and seeing her explore this world for her own and make up her own mind, but it is a life of sacrifice of everything you'd ever found precious or dear: the good food, the travel to exotic places, the shopping for luxury items, sleep. They rob you of your youth, vitality and sanity truly. And when you have nothing left to give, she still yells "Mummy!" in the dead of night and you are expected to be at her beck and call again whilst she insists on kicking you fervently to make sure you are still there in bed with her.

I see longingly a friend's wedding back home in KL. It's a beautiful affair with designer suits and gowns and bespoke Jimmy Choos. And I am envious. Envious that I can't go back to that carefree moment when I truly believed my best years with my best friend was still ahead of me. I watch Grand designs present a modern mews that was built for a young new family in East London and how they married their family life to their living space in London and I am envious again. Envious that I do not even live in a space where I truly believed I loved and can make dreams in. The heavy scent of discontent has not been something I had ever been familiar with and I don't know how it all started. I really don't know how I got here.

Despite all the whinging though, I still burst with pride as my determined daughter edges her way into this world, one small leg trying to take two steps at a time. She puts strings of words together now and actively tries to communicate. I feel like she loves me most because I am the only one in this world that listens to her and affirms my understanding of what she has just said. I am the only one in her world that understands her language. And life with the man? Well let's just say, being single in this world of Tinder and other social crazies terrify me. We live in a heavily populated earth and yet I'd feel alone if he wasn't by my side watching a TV show, criticising our dreams together with me.

So I ask myself, is life enough? Perhaps we will slowly forget how good it was to live for ourselves as we accept our parental roles. I know the tantrums will fade but I will be pulled in other ways. There will be homework and packed lunches and extracurricular activities to keep up with. There will be her social life too to manage on top of her education and instilling values and faith. I suppose the good memories we have with our children will also build up in time and we will eventually stop lamenting the loss of the glamorous adult parties we used to throw, the dream house will become a family home and before we know it, we will have to worry about our own health and not being a burden to our children.

Perhaps then, hopefully then, we will still be together and happily say we pulled through and yes, life was enough. It was more than enough. It was the best it could have ever been.




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How is Motherhood?

This is the question everyone has asked me this first trip back presenting my baby to everyone in Syd and Hong Kong. I have portrayed a very relaxed and flexible mom on holidays. Baby sleeping at midnight so that we can stay up late and she's been so compliant, not a tantrum from lack of sleep and even willing to sleep in in the mornings to make up for it. Such a dream!

If only I knew it was always going to have been this way. Or perhaps it would have been if I didn't stress so much last year. I wonder about what life could have been if I raised her here in Sydney with her doting grandparents and cousins galore. We had a barbecue the other night with family and in the midst of eight other children she'd just met running around playing cheerfully, she stood on the sidelines every so often trying to catch the attention of another child to play with her. I worried so much then that that could be her in nursery, that she had no idea how to gain the attention of her peers. What if she didn't have the social skills to make friends because I didn't teach her the right way? I don't remember any bosom buddies from when I was that little. Also, what if it was my fault because I didn't have regular play dates for her with familiar kids so that she knew what it was like to have a friend?

It's hard not knowing what to do because it is your first child. But despite all the longings of how much better the Motherhood and her childhood experience could have been in Syd because of the people we know here, we kept longing for London's culture, the European travels and the routine of our quiet lives back in Putney whilst we were here. I surprisingly did not go crazy shopping this trip. Something to do with having a shoebox flat perhaps.

Seeing her love her grandparents' home so much has been endearing. Everyday she knows to play in the lounge by herself and to come to the kitchen to be fed. She has been so content living here the past ten days. Not a day has she really pestered me for 'Gai gai' our word for going out. But she would pester her grandma for more food and give a massive cheeky smile when presented with her own bowl of noodles even if she was really tired. And the parroting on this trip has been fun. I have heard her discover so many words and even stringing two word sentences together. Amazing! Her grandparents have even asked us to leave her here for a year, which I shall take as compliment on how well behaved they have found her this trip.

I think we got lucky because she hasn't quite reached the terrible twos just yet. She is so quietly determined to achieve the things she set out to such as climbing her cousins' bunk bed in HK that I have no doubt the year ahead will be a struggle for me. Will I discipline her? Will she respond? Will I be up to the task of teaching her the right etiquette, cultural references, language and attitude?

It's hard to tell. Even as I type this post, WhatsApp notifications pop up with my bestie telling me she is such a good kid. I hope I don't ruin her with my bad habits and won't let laziness and forgetfulness sneak in with bad parenting styles.

That's all I can hope for I suppose. I need to tirelessly dedicate the next twenty years of my life guiding and nurturing her and not try to smother her or crowd her judgement or confidence. Heres hoping that I'd remember that.





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When you no longer want to listen to me

A Young woman and her mum presumably visiting her in London are having the same conversation I can picture me having with my mum. The weight of patience from the daughter toward a nagging mum who is unsure of the life the daughter is about to embark upon. Coming from completely different cultural backgrounds, with different values towards ambition and life, both trying their best to meet in the middle somewhere and not land in a fight over touchy topics too early on in the visit. Inevitably I wonder if I'd ever get there with you, my firstborn.

I'll be more understanding and not make you live my life, I say. But the world seems rather scary these days. Without a set of rules and values to help guide you, I feel very insecure. I sit in conferences that tout Artificial Intelligence doing a job I did for the first three years of my career. And I wonder what jobs you'd have as options when it's your turn. What skills do I need to equip you with to get you to where you'd want to be?

At fifteen months you're already developing a rich imagination. You found some cartons of ready formula over the weekend in the lower shelves of the pantry. After unsuccessfully trying to open one to feed yourself, you decided they'd make good planes and 'flew' them over your head for a while until you noticed me watching. You hand me one of them. I mimic you, 'flying the plane', but you protest and push the carton closer to my ear whilst raising yours to the same. We are on the phone now mummy, babble babble. It amazed me that you are so expressive and your ability to gamify what was initially a disappointing scenario for you is encouraging. I love that imagination. To me it means you could never be bored. That you'd always have the tools within yourself to pick yourself up and believe in the achievement of the impossible. It is such a precious gift to have.

That's not the only skill set fueling your child's play. I never thought it but those soft rolls in your legs are now supporting your rotund belly as you charge around the flat at full speed and giggles abound at our guesses as to where you're headed. Usually you'd run right into us for a big warm hug wrapping your little hands around our necks if we are low enough, or our waist if we have our backs to you or if we're standing around our knees. You may be small but you hug with all your might (and big heart) and it is as strong a hold as a half hearted adult cuddle.

You chat. You want me to listen. You try to chuck my phone if I am on it and not paying full attention to you. You know the words, cheese, banana, book, bird, baba, cheers and animal sounds for fish, cow, snakes and that kangaroos and bunnies hop. You can point to so much more to identify them when I am asking you to.

You are just so clever that I feel myself overflowing with pride. I couldn't have planned you better. And I continue this post three months on from starting it, not wanting to change a word from the previous post because I can never return to that moment now, you have more of a vocabulary now and your pretend play skills have expanded. The day I posted a picture of you delightfully playing with your toy kitchen for the first time I was overjoyed but the dark day quickly turned for the worse before I knew it.



Your beautiful cyan dress that I've always loved you in is cut up now, possibly in landfill. Every time you tense your joints or curl your left hand my heart flutters out of control and nears panic mode as I struggle to push the memories of you convulsing on the floor of the shopping centre out of my mind. I try to not blame myself but I shouldn't have put you on the slide, I shouldn't have clapped stockings on you when we went out to the shops. Sometimes this is precisely when I cannot reconcile the east and west in me to decide what I need to do for you to care for you. I let you overheat that day. I held back on the paracetamol hoping you would cure naturally. I caused your body unbelievable grief that day and I paid for it a thousand times fold as I held your stiff soundless self as your wild confused eyes searched the surroundings and recognised nothing not even me or my cries. Even though you've quickly forgiven me and adore me still.

My darling girl, mummy was never qualified to do this job and being strict on you is tough for me too. But I have to try my best to not fail you and part of that is to make you listen as much as you can now because one day you won't listen to me anymore and you won't forgive me for the mistakes I made. You might not even acknowledge the sacrifices we made. However, despite the tough week just past where you fought me every day through your antibiotics, where you were impossibly spoiled because we slept with you every night, where I ended up in the ambulance myself in Luxembourg cause I had tried to fight the infection you gave me but failed embarsssingly. Despite all that my dear, I will keep trying to be strong for you and to give you my best without failing you again the way I did. I hope you'll listen to me.








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Being cruel to be kind

Here we are at eighteen months. Not that I could forget it, baby daddy keeps nagging me that this is the point we agreed upon to wean her off her dummy. I know it is important and I have started to see the signs, her muffled speech when it is in her mouth, her pure addiction and tantrums to get at it. It wasn't going to get easier to wean her as she grows to learn how to argue back and fight harder. But I needed to ready myself.

This task was no easier than when I let her cry it out. I put my foot down for ages and fought hard with baby daddy over it. He beseeches me to reason, that sleep deprivation has turned us into a moody gloomy household and that included the baby. I just couldn't do it though, my firstborn wailing for me from her crib, hands sticking out in the dark to reach me. How could I steel myself against it? I think it happened by accident the first night. I was likely so tired I slept through her cries as the husband closes the door on her and leaves her in her own room for the night. I am ordered to not go in until at least five am. I huffed off into bed with a silent stubborn rage, but too tired to fight. I must have slept through her cries. Eventually she stopped crying for me too and there I had let her CIO, the one thing I was dead against.

Same story goes for the car seat. I had to accept it. It was tough love but I had to otherwise we'd be tortured through every car ride and she was going to keep pushing her boundaries. We wanted well behaved children and that means she needs to know some tough love.

Back to dummy weaning, I tried hiding it but she always found it, I tried rules but she fought hard to disobey them and I found myself bending them myself for the easy (quiet) way out. I explored rubbing something unpleasant onto the dummy like Echinacea or olive leaf extract but they don't recommend those for children her age.

Over the weekend, I decided I was ready, I put some medicated oil on her dummy. I didn't like it but that's what my parents said they did with me and I survived it. She glares at me and throws the dummy onto the floor with a loud angry "No!" Then through tears and agony, she picks it up again and keeps sucking it despite the horrid taste and smell. I am at my wits' end, staring at her stubbornness with disbelief.

Her daddy comes home at noon and I related the story, he reminds me that there is another alternative that I have ignored but is also our traditional way to wean a child.

We took her to the fair that afternoon and let her pick a Giraffe balloon to take home. She was so happy yet at the same time so insecure that we would take it away (we hardly ever buy her new toys) that she wouldn't let go of it and so we had to carry her together with the giraffe. It was ridiculous really if you see the size of the balloon.




That kept her occupied enough to not storm us for her dummy. But the peace didn't last long. I take deep breaths as we pulled up at home. I knew it was the last resort that I needed to turn to. I took all four dummies and dipped them into my homemade chilli sauce. So hot that it brings tears to my eyes but I could trust it for kick above and beyond the store bought stuff. So cruel, but it's short term pain for long term gain I keep telling myself.

I feel numb, as though the chilli had made its way into my heart, as I hand over the loaded dummy to her, as I hold her afterwards whilst she sobs uncontrollably onto my shoulder in pain, and this morning in the dark hours of the morning when I couldn't give her the dummy and she really wanted it. My resolve to help her wean has created a heavy dull void in me where I must have not allowed myself to feel in this very moment. Echoes of her cries, her frustration, they all wash through me as I file this inside me as an achievement under motherhood, for future reference and for building resilience.

One huge leap for me, but perhaps it's a small step for mankind. Several reassuring sympathetic nods from colleagues at work reminds me that I am not the only parent that has exercised this horrendous feat. This isn't uncharted territory. Traditional methods yet again has proved effective despite me not agreeing with the journey, but we all seem better on the other end. Perhaps this hippy mum thing is not my cup of tea.

The real truth about marriage

I am in a pensive mood. It’s been a big week of worries. The sort of worry that you can’t do anything tangible about because it is out of your hands. But you worry all the same and the spouse treads around carefully in your fragile environment hoping fervently not to push you over the edge at any point.
On Monday, my Mum went with my Dad to the hospital for a four hour Angioplasty surgery. Those must have been a horrible four hours of waiting for her. He is fine now, and life appears to have resume to normal for them all. But in those hours of need, my mother was by his side. Despite all that they have gone through in their marriage in the past 30 odd years of raising a family and building a life together. The sweat, blood, fights and tears. It boiled down to them two in the hospital hoping for more moments together.

They never were equals nor shared loads in anything. My Mum worked harder in the family business and was ever more involved in our upbringing and decisions on our education. My Dad made sure there was always a roof over our heads and the bills got paid. This is not a huge contrast perhaps to my current household except S is more involved in our daughter’s life and the decisions that get made about her upbringing. We work more towards equality but there are days where I wonder if sometimes the energy I put into fighting for equality within our marriage could be better expended in acceptance and just doing those chores.

We have always fought. That’s our happily ever after marriage picture. We fought all the way into our marriage and last year, fuelled by short fuses from sleep deprivation and the eternal worries of a first time parent we escalated to new levels of spite for each other. The difference is that as a mother to a young child, I could not walk out of the marriage anymore. I had to consider that my daughter loves her father and would learn so much more being there with him everyday. We both had so much to give her because we came from such opposing ends of talents and values.

So yesterday when I found out two of my friends’ marriages were on the brink of ending, my heart stopped and it went out to their two young children who will be caught in the midst of it all. I then thought about my friends who will have to bear parenthood alone and it all seemed too heavy a burden for me to contemplate. I couldn’t breathe amongst it all.

The thing is. That could very easily be me. I am a victim of sacrificing much much more than my partner. But I couldn’t help but remember an interview I did once with a successful Partner at my old work place whose husband was a CFO and how she in one sentence attributed her success at being a working mum with four young children to her supportive husband and then in the next one very quickly clarified that she is definitely still doing most of the work.

So I look back at how I have dealt with the anger and spite that built up within our marriage last year and whilst I cannot prescribe this to everyone else, I hope at least for those mothers who still have loving husbands that still want to be a contributing part of the family (no matter what percentage that may be), I hope that the changes I have made to my mentality below could be of some guidance to them.

1. I gave up on the idea of divorce. Because its not the easy way out. Because either way it was going to be difficult to move on in life and there was going to be heartbreak and tears staying or going, but I believed that the heartbreak was better being on my end rather than my daughter’s. And so I choose to stay and fight it out.

2. I accept that sometimes I am too strong-willed and particular to allow the household to be run in his way and so that’s why I don’t actually accept his help. So this means that I start seeing amidst my exhaustion and frustration, I need to see that it isn’t that he doesn’t help, it’s that he is doing the same thing but in a different way and he has a different level of tolerance to the same issues I see.

3. I understand that he cannot change the person he is. At least not through me telling him to do so. The notion most dramas and soap operas drum into us as young girls seeking romance is that true love changes a man to want to be a better person. But in reality, people are more set in their ways than that and true love to that extent is very very exhausting. I am not saying it is impossible, but for now I choose to put it on the same shelf as fairy tale endings and lead my life revelling in the small wins instead.

That’s how I mentally keep our marriage in check. I suppose it helps that my toddler is more independent now and our lives are back on a manageable track. We have routines which may be mundane at times, but they work and we each know the plan so it cuts out on the misunderstandings and miscommunication we had all of last year.

Yes my sweet sweet daughter helps too. She is so much of him in her quiet ways, her sense of humour and her clever ways of figuring out how things work. Yet she is so much of me in her eagerness to please and will to get her way and desire to be excellent at what she does. I realised whilst picnicking atop a mound in the park last weekend that she was no longer a baby. That she can now fork fried noodles into her own mouth and then take a swig of water to wash it down thoroughly enjoying herself in the moment. She was a delightful companion to me at the art gallery, understanding the experience of the installations and revelling in the mysterious beauty in Yayoi Kusama’s creations. She chatted and conversed with me and listened back when I had my say. Such a different environment from when we were spending time together last year whilst I was on maternity leave. I didn’t feel quite as alone or clueless as I was.




I think that's why we get married and build families. So that we walk through life together and live for each other's happiness and worries. We get companionship out of it all so that we may never need to be alone.



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Momentary revelry of life

Hi.

I am still here. I never said goodbye. I thought I was ready, but I miss you so much which is why although I let go of the other domain, I couldn't help but want to salvage and reinstate this for the old posts and memories. So much has happened since I'd last left here for Wordpress. Moving to UK, fun employment, living the expat life, pregnancy, motherhood. I am still trying to figure it all out. This is the first time in a long while that I thought I've got it in the bag by now, this motherhood thing. I can go through my daily routine working five days a week really smoothly. I feel happy at work and feel like I can contribute and then I get to come home and be with my child and each her grow and establish her own little personality. What has helped immensely so far:
1. The toddler finally having a routine and sleeping longer hours in the day and at night. Her being more predictable meant we could plan our schedules better.
2. Planning ahead and packing ahead the night before or when she sleeps. Meal planning on the commute so that when I get home I am not planning whilst a fussy toddler is hanging on to my leg begging for food/attention.
3. Working one day from home makes a world of difference as I am able to clean the flat quickly before the toddler gets home.
4. Keeping meals simple and meat and three veg is mainly done in one pot with the toddler eating the same thing as us. I used to make different meals for her but it was running me to the ground and she was not enjoying food the way I wanted her to so we just threw caution to the wind . She eats healthy at nursery five days a week, so if we follow the 5:2 diet, she's doing just fine. Our weeknight dinners can range as follows:

Mon: Lemon and Orange stewed vegetables and breaded chicken breast nuggets
Tues: Pan fried minute steak with wilted garlic spinach and minted peas
Wed: Herb and nut stuffed chicken breast with stir fried wombok
Thurs: Fish curry stew with a medley of root vegetables
Fri: Homemade Pizza night ( My Thermomix kneads the dough whilst I work from home).

Sometimes Thursday is leftovers night and fried rice or casserole of some sort is always a good way to use up the leftovers so we can clear the fridge for groceries and fresh cooking on the weekend.

It's good, the little one is happy and ever ready to learn these days. Just the weekend passed, I discovered she can say book, mmm for cow, she can point to her head when I say it and throws her hands up high and opens and shuts her little hands for Twinkle twinkle little star. All from me just slowly listening to her carefully and not being dismissive of her babble. I am stoked (and stunned) that she is communicating and developing more skills. But on the other hand, this makes for a very active child that is constantly bugging me to read book after book to her if we are at home, or to walk her around the restaurant if we are out. This latter one I am not a fan of. She just won't sit in a high chair anymore whilst I catch up with my friends. I have a feeling that this smugness and confidence in being a working mum is about to dissipate. I am on the cusp of parenting a walking toddler and fearfully awaiting the tantrums, arguments and more teething.

Until then, I wanted to note down this momentary revelry of life. Things are good and I don't want to take it for granted. Shall I disappear again, you'll find me on my Instagram account until I emerge again for air. Holding my breath for now. Talk soon...or later.





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