Two and a half days before I'm back at work! I can't believe I survived an entire year and a bit as an SAHM. Can you?
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Thank you for hanging out with me here, if you've been keeping up with my posts since I decided to start blogging again. I think I would like to write about being a FTWM, so maybe we'll meet back here in near future, who knows?
I suppose I should be waxing lyrical about how much my baby has grown (and feeling wistful at how fast he has grown) and how much I've enjoyed witnessing his milestones - FBC is now big, fat and noisy, weighing about four times as much as he did at birth. He babbles in the full belief that we understand him and he is having an actual conversation with us. He sings along with his encouraging singing helicopter which Jon's parents got him for his first birthday, also in the full belief that he is carrying a tune and not just babbling some more. He has started taking a few tentative steps unassisted, though he is a bit of a scardey-cat and lurches towards the nearest stable piece of furniture the moment he realises that he is actually walking.
In all honesty, the past year has already melded into a blur of diaper changes and having sung Be Thou My Vision one too many times. Perhaps I will have tender memories of this period of time when FBC is older - it was only recently that I started to marvel at just how amazing it is that Jon and I (with God's blessing, of course) gave life to another person. Better late than never!
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Being parents has led Jon and me to reminisce about our childhoods. It's funny how all these things I didn't even know I remembered have been coming to mind.
I remember my father bringing me to West Coast Park to play before dropping me off (late) at kindergarten, and also him buying me the 'one ball one ball' ice cream in a cone. I remember that for everyone's birthdays for a good few years we had the lurid green kaya pandan coconut layer cake from Bengawan Solo, and "Happy Birthday" would be iced in clashing, festive, bright pink icing across the top. It was delicious but I'm not sure I would eat it today; would I eschew it in favour of a more "wholesome" Cedele cake? I remember hiding the cane with PoBe (Jon has similar memories), I remember being made to write lines and trying to finish them more quickly by going down the columns - for instance, if I had to write "I will do my homework before watching TV", I would write all the I's, followed by the will's, and so on and so forth. I don't remember actually completing all the lines, and that method resulted in some alarmingly crooked sentences.
I remember listening to 'Top Of The World' on my father's hi-fi set in our old house, remember being scolded for getting 77/100 for a Math test when I was in primary three, remember turfing my father out of my parents' bed on weekends so I could lie there and talk to my mother (this carried on until I was quite old). I remember feeling upset with my mother whenever we went shopping because she would say that shopping centres gave her a headache and she would always want to go home before we bought anything, how come other peoples' mothers bring them shopping and they have so many nice clothes and now I am the one having headaches and dreading bringing my child(ren) to shopping malls on the weekends in the future, all the time wishing that I could dress them in Uniqlo forever and be done with it. I could, of course, if we just had boys, but I think it would be nice to have a little girl. Until she reaches puberty.
The quarrels, the cuddles, the countless meals my mother cooked. The things which I am only now beginning to realise I took for granted, because that is the way of children. Such is the stuff memories are made of.
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FBC will not, of course, have any memory of his first birthday party, but I definitely will! I made everything from scratch as a birthday present to myself, from the crackers to the hummus (Googled and adapted so no real recipe) to the chicken curry shepherd's pie I spent nights dreaming up (I was fearful it would be an absolute failure but it was lovely), to the cake (yes, FBC was allowed to consume that much sugar), the mini pizzas which were topped with a riff on FBC's favourite butternut squash tomato puree and lots of cheese - because what is a kid's birthday party without kid-sized pizzas? - and the garlic and lemon pulled pork I cobbled together at the last minute because I feared there wouldn't be enough food.
I intended to post recipes regularly when I started blogging again and this would be the perfect time for a recipe spam, this farewell to SAHM-hood (for now) post but firstly my phone up and died on me so I can't post pictures, and secondly, I'm feeling lazy. Drop me a line in real life if you would like to discuss anything I made, I'd be more than happy to do so.
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I also wanted to blog about my path back to pre-pregnancy fitness but it seemed a bit odd to do so, it not being a very me thing to do, somehow, so I stopped. Since this is a round-up of the past year, I'll just say that I've actually been keeping up with yoga videos and yoga regularly, if I can't get to a yoga class I do yoga at least once a week at home. In terms of overall fitness I think I am stronger than I was before I got pregnant (from lugging FBC around, inter alia), I can maintain about 6:00/km for 10km or so, with my fastest split being about 5:51/km. All it takes is being ever so slightly obsessed (running at 4pm in the blazing heat because there is just no other time to do so), and a healthy dose of vanity. One thing I've learnt as well, that I will try to force myself to put into practice with my next pregnancy when it happens, is to be PATIENT with weight loss and getting back fitness. What's more there will be two babies (three, if you count Jon - haha) to look after and as obsessed and competitive as I am, there is no point pushing oneself that hard (but ask me again after I have no. 2).
As much as I will miss being part of the Tai Tai Gym Gang (I made that up, it doesn't really exist and everyone at the Tai Tai Time spin classes looks at me as if I am either a university student or an errant employee), I am glad to be going back to work and being a Lunchtime Gym Rat again. And who knows, maybe this new place I am going to will afford me the flexibility to sorta kinda be part of the TTGG.
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Before I go, I know I said a few posts ago that I would write about discipline after I had given it some thought, and my views on it are that: (1) we agree with spanking; and (2) I can't wait until FBC is old enough to understand the concept of a naughty corner. It does get easier to tell when they are being naughty as opposed to just being babies - a couple of weeks can make all the difference.
Till we meet again, it has been nice sharing my SAHM journey with you.
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