Having a son is a money saver....for me!

When the two blue strips appeared on the test pack, I immediately imagine a little girl inside my tummy, even after my "usually can feel and right in the end" husband told me that is going to be a boy, I still told people and myself that I would like the baby to be a girl. And of course my mum, who already have a grandson from my brother also helped me in my prayer.

The reason that I wanted a girl: because I want to shower her with all the cute little things that they sell and made for girls, that was not available when I was growing up. When I was a small girl myself, the choices for clothing and accessories for us was really limited. And if your mom or one of your family member couldn't sew, though luck! In this case, I am really lucky, my mum, the superwoman, is a genius when it comes into making clothes for her family. I can bring a magazine picture or show her what my idol was wearing on the TV, and she would replicate them so well that you would think my mum was the original creative designer of the clothes on the magazine. But that of course have it's limit. First of all, as genius as mum is, there are plenty of things she can't make such as jeans, and not mentioning how busy she is, with 4 kids, a house to run, a business to manage. So ultimately I have to wait for weddings, new years, birthdays and big events to happen before I can have new cloth.

These days all you have to do is walk into a children clothing shops and you can buy anything clothing style for your baby, and if you ever decided to make a twin style for you and your baby, that's not hard to do also. I used to walk into Next Kids, H&M juniors, Mothercare and itching to buy girl's cute summer dresses, jackets, shorts, pants, t-shirts....the thing is I don't have anybody that I can buy for. My brother, cousins and my best friends, for some reasons they all decided to have boys. I was so happy when the daughter of one of the teacher I worked with was celebrating her 4th birthday, I finally got a reason to buy one of those cute dresses for her. 

I was a bit down I found out that I was having a boy. But when 3rd trimester started rolling, and not only begun to fall in love more and more with my baby, I realized what a blessing for me, the shopaholic, to have a boy instead a girl. I begun imagining me running around malls buying all the cute dresses that probably be worn 2x before she will grow out of them, hoarding cute berets, headbands and accessories that she probably wore once and lost them or worse yet hate them. And not only I saved money from future spending, I also save money because my nephew's baby clothes are handed down to me.

As I observed two of my brothers, another revelation came to me. Boys for the most part for go the need to beautify themselves, example: my brothers still wear their high school gym tee, eventhough my youngest bro left high school 5 yrs ago, and the other left it 10yrs ago. The tee is pretty bad shape, but they don't care, as long is still comfortable. My sister and me on the other hand, have tons of clothes but everytime we open our closet we said the same thing, "we don't have anything to wear". And that only on the clothing department, let also see the different in toiletries, for us girls, shower means we use the best smelling soap the shop has to offer, the smoothest shampoo on earth, the silkest conditioner we can find, and that just to name the few things we use daily, boys in the other hand, for the most part the can live with a bar of soap to clean for head to toe. Reflecting on this, I am more grateful for a boy. And please don;t get me started on the double standard our (meaning asian) society put on girls.

What if my second child is a girl (if I decided to have another one! :D ), than what do I do, you might asked. Well........we'll cross the bridge when the time come!

Limitless!

No...i'm not gonna talk about the movie.....I am going to talk about my son and his future...........

"Don't worry, art and music talent never runs in the family!" that's what my parent and other family members said to me when I came home showing my report card that I only got C minus for singing class and art & craft class in elementary school. And that's not the first time nor the last time i've heard those words spoken to me. So for many many years, I believe that. I believed that when I was kicked out from the school choir line for being to slow to learn the notations, and I used those words again to justified cheating on the high school drawing final test by submitting my friend's work.

And I definitely heard those words again when my uncle's wife, a piano teacher, told me that I need to loosen up my fingers so that I can play the piano better. So instead of learning to loosen up I gave up, because "art and music talent never runs in the family!"

But later in China, I learned that despite the no talent for art and music, I can do a decent job on my chinese calligraphy (I will never gave up my day job to become a calligrapher though! :D) and my biggest discovery.....when my Yang Qin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangqin)teacher told me that I did a great job and my hand bounce so naturally on the strings............my o my.......That encouragement words fired me to practice almost everyday, whenever i had the time or then school opened the practice room. Unfortunately, to practice was cut short because the room was renovated and i never really found out what happened to the yang qin. But I was so in love with the instrument I decided that when I have the money and place, I will buy one and practice again.

By now you probably asking what's all of that got to do with my son future..............I don't want my son to grow like me. I want him to explore all the possibilities that life is giving him. I will encourage, support and when needed push him when he wants to try a new activity. I believe that everybody is born not knowing what we can or can not do in life. How many times in we heard this: "our family don't do well in sport"; "our people are not a traveler kind"; etc............just because some one in our family can't play sport very good it doesn't mean that the other can't either, maybe they are not going to as famous or as good Beckham but why not try first. Just because a lot of people in the neighborhood don't like being to far from home, it doesn't mean that other people can't explore the wide beautiful world.

Those words, are what I called negative subconscious programming (NSP). NSP can be deadly crippling, yes, I said deadly, because NSP has many people died without knowing what he or she can really do in life. And for vowed that as long as I can I will not give NSP to my baby or anybody around me.

I will give him my cheers and claps, whether he  is a ballet dancer or an engineer.

I will give him my hugs and encouragements, whether he's a painter or an accountant.

I will give him my love and supports, whether he's a writer or a pilot.

He can be whatever he decided to be, as long he will try the best that he can, be happy in what he decided to do and make a decent living on it. For him, the sky is not the limit.............

My baby fell off the bed!

"UUUUAAAA" my baby wailed from his napping room, I rushed down stair to see if he's ok. And He's not, he was laying on his tummy on the floor, that meant that he fell from a 40 cm high bed............I just screamed hysterically and picked him up from the floor, my husband n Wit (my maid/nanny) came rushing to see what happened. I started checking his body for any open wound while my husband is calming him down. After we are sure there is no skin cut, we made sure he's aware and not vomiting. As soon as, and then I asked Wit to get his milk and bag ready, I ran down the street to my neighbor, who happens to be a hired driver, and asked him to take us to the nearest hospital.

On the way to the hospital, each of us can't helped but blame ourselves, especially me, as I prayed for him, I couldn't helped not to do the what "IFs" scenario in my head. What if I didn't go up stair to talked to my husband, what if Wit wasn't busy sweeping the front yard...and many more what "IFs". The hospital is close by, so before I could think of anymore "IFs", we arrived at the BROS (Bali Royal Hospital) ER door. We were the only patient there, thank goodness, that meant the doctors can concentrate on my baby without distraction. From initial check the doctor said that he looked ok, but just to be sure he's sending my baby for CT Scan. When we heard that we're kinda skeptical, not on the scan, but on my son being still for at least 2 minute while the machine is scanning, saying my son is an active boy is an under statement. But with my husband holding his arms, I held his chin, and we both talked and sang songs for him, miraculously he stayed still long enough for the machine to scan his head. After that we were told to wait for 30 minute for the result. It was the longest 30 minute, and with us thanking God and Mother Mary, the scan showed that everything is normal, no blood clot, no hemorrhage, we can take him home and do a 24 hrs observation, if he vomit a lot, got a big headache and started to sleep outside of his sleeping patterns, then we need to bring him back to hospital.

On the way home, we again thanks God and Mother Mary for protecting our son also praying in the next 24 hrs nothing bad gonna happen.

When we got home he was sound asleep, as we put him on his crib, we hugged and cried. We promised him and each other that we'll try harder to protect him.

For now he's looking normal and healthy, and every time he smiles at me, I pray for his safety and well being.

No cellphone? how did you live?

My hubby n I sometimes would talk about the world would look to our son, and we could imagine that is the question he might ask when we'll tell him that we grew up without cellphone and internet.

Today I read an article :

http://www.babble.com/products/mom-products/old-technology-vhs-floppy-disk-cassette-tapes

And I know that we are not alone.

I remember talking to my 12 yrs younger sister about Unyil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_Unyil), and she shook her head in confusion, this is way before her time. It hit me again when one of my tutoring student was asking to proof read her biology assignment that she got from Google and the worst was when I was trying to encourage a 20 y.o. guy, that I know from my foodie circle, after one of his picture he'd taken was slammed by the a more experienced photographer,so I told him to just shoot a lot of pictures after all he's using a digital DSLR camera so when he doesn't like the picture he can just delete them, unlike before when we still use rolls of films. And he looked at me like I'm from Mars. All of those people are only 12-15 yrs younger than me, but they just might as well be 50 years younger.

Yes, I do feel old when I think about all of those memory and the idea that my son will say that I am old because when I was growing up people still use telegram when they want to send a very important message quickly, or the fact that I knew how to use the typewriter, and that when I said pen pals, that doesn't mean my Facebook friends or my email buddies, that really means you are using your pen and write news or info to you pals on a piece of paper and then send them snail mail.

Any of you have similar experience?