But I digress.

SHOPPING. Now that I’ve got a wedding to attend but will be taking Arddun along for the ceremony, this much is clear.

• I cannot wear a dress if I’m planning to feed Arddun.
  Not unless I want to hoike it up in the middle of some faraway bible classroom, and potentially scare other God-fearing, church-going children playing hide-and-seek.
• I cannot wear anything fancy that I currently own.
  Not unless I wear one of those torturous body socks that really just redistribute your muffin top, so it pops up somewhere further up north and suddenly, you have a back cleavage. Or an extra chin.
• I haven’t stepped into a really beautiful garment in ages.
  Because almost everything I buy recreationally nowadays comes in sizes 6-12 months. 
  

And because I’m running off to Brisbane soonish, I’m running out of days to try stuff. So off to the shops we went today. The mission: to find something feminine yet structured, practical yet pretty. Blouse and Bottom, was what I was thinking.

And I timed it all perfectly. Feed Arddun at noon. Drive to town. Scoff down sushi at 1pm. Meet friend for afternoon tea at 1:30pm. Get Arddun down for a nap at 2:00pm till 3:00pm while I shopped.

Arddun did not get the memo. Because she slept from 2:45pm… till THREE O’CLOCK.

Fifteen miserable minutes.

As soon as she woke up, she was agitating to get down from her pram. That’s her new thing. She’s oh-so-mobile now, so of COURSE she can just crawl along beside me while I browse shop to shop. Is what I think she was hoping.

Nothing would console her while she bayed in her pram. Not rice crackers, not stern words, not rocking one-handed while I contorted into blouses with the other, not playing peek-a-boo in between skirt changes.

In desperation, I got her out of the pram – if only to turn down the volume in a confined space. And then spent the next few minutes almost dribbling her like a soccer ball so she wouldn’t crawl out the dressing room at the speed of light. You try doing that while putting on pants.

But then… a moment’s lapsed attention, a quick turn of the head – and she was out! She popped out of the changing room like soda from a shaken bottle, all effervescent and giddy with success. The little monkey was gleefully out of reach, and I was stuck in my change room in a state of undress debating which was more embarrassing – my baby running amok in a chi-chi boutique, or a half-nekkid thirty-something lumbering after her.

Thankfully, the sales assistant was only too glad to play babysitter. It became obvious that she’s almost used to this. And then it dawned on me that it’s 3pm, and there’s hardly anyone else in the mall except mommies with prams trying their darndest to have a good time with a restless baby.

I wised up after that. Went straight to Review, and bought the first outfit there. Moral of the story: always stick to brands you know. And shop online if you can.

This was the verse:

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Somewhere in my spiritual life, it got trendy to ONLY ask for strength to handle the come-what-may. Somehow, somewhere, it became the done thing to NOT plead with God. To not beg Him for a specific outcome. Not ask that it be A, and not B. Pretty please. Somehow, somewhere, the idea that we submit to God’s will mutually excluded the bit where I run to Him like a child and pester Him. To take what’s nearest and dearest to my heart and go… “Dad, this is my heart’s desire. Could I please have it?” Rinse, repeat.

I don’t know where I learnt not to ask for healing, but only for endurance. Not to ask for the removal of the impediment, but only to beg for fortitude.

So thanks for the reminder. And for finding the words, when my own brain lies still and rather useless at the mo.

2. Pretty vouchers
Arddun’s Christmas present to me: a very generous get-pretty voucher at a spa in the city. This, on top of another pedicure and facial voucher. Which is on top of my hair appointment this Saturday.

Well!

After feeling all mumsy and like a dag for months on end, it’s lovely to finally book in these pretty-me-up dates. The impetus is a wedding in late March and my trips to Brisbane and Singapore. Oh who am I kidding. I don’t really need a reason to book in afternoons of massages and pampering!

3. Hand-me-down Happies
Now that my weight and body shape have stabilised, I’ve had to take a deep breath and start throwing out things I can’t wear anymore. Which is about half my wardrobe, easily. And while I’ve been putting off the putting-aside because of laziness, the bigger reason has been my reluctance to pass on my clothes to complete strangers.

I donate regularly to Salvos and Vinnies… but these clothes spell history for me. And because most of these pieces have been with me since I was a teen, it’s been even harder to give away remnants of my past life in Singapore. These clothes aren’t just clothes – they’re memories of dates and break-ups and Sunday services and tertiary life and first jobs… They are one of the very few things in my house that came with me from Singapore. That were part of what I brought to our marriage home.

But then the Kirky girls have suddenly all grown up – and so I’ve found new clothes horses! It’s been happiness on both sides, because they get a new wardrobe while I see my clothes get a new lease of life every Sunday morning. Now complemented with gorgeous chestnut brown and strawberry blonde hair.

So I’m putting it to a vote.

Please let me know which you prefer! Am keeping this poll up until the end of February.

Standing tall and calling loud
You do both your parents proud
Crawling here, reaching there
Fearless lunges off the chair
Climbing anything that’s “stable”
Pushing prams and chewing cable
Standing every chance you get
Terrorising Leila’s cat
Doing laps around the pen
Watching Wiggles now and then
Playing independently
Seeking jiggles on my knee
Interacting with your toys
Hugging dad and kissing boys
Eating like it’s all the fashion
Trying new foods with a passion
Growing teeth and chewing more
Rice cakes, mango, meat galore
Laughing, clapping, every day
Always with so much to say
“Mum-mum-mum” and “ba-ba-ba”
“Oh look there, a zoom-zoom car!”
Chasing after vacuum cleaner
Once so scared, but now you’re keener
Finger-play and Peek-a-boo
Not a fan of Gymbaroo
Crawled through tunnels, kept the pace
Hated covering your face
Learning how to throw your voice
Across the room – your favourite choice
Testing bound’ries, making mess
Learning “no” does not mean “yes”
Once so helpless, now so bold
And you’re only eight months old!

I love mango. Sometimes, I even get some in my mouth.

Eight years, seven months and four days ago, I came to Canberra and thought it a grey, lonely place. I couldn’t get over how abandoned it looked. How empty, lifeless. (It was a winter week night in Civic.)

But it’s hardly that. I just didn’t know where to look at the time.

We went to The Deck for afternoon tea yesterday. The sun was out, the grass was greener than I’d ever seen it, the waters were still and lovely. The cafe was empty save for the table of us, which meant we were treated to the most stunning view of the lake and Regatta Point. In air-conditioned comfort on a hot Summer’s day. Our babies, crawling and clapping at our feet, oblivious to the magnificent background they’ll one day inherit.

And I fell in love with Canberra all over again that afternoon.

NO PICTURE, though! What a pity!

2) Love notes

Read melancholic mooing. See loving, heartfelt comments. <3

3) Hello, friend

It’s the most natural thing, I realise. It’s such an easy trap to fall into. But with every new milestone I seem to reach in my adulthood, I see my friends less. It’s a two-way street. My timetable’s all different now, and the first few months with Arddun were busy as I tried to settle into my new role. But it’s almost like old friends don’t think to call you anymore when you reach a new stage of life, because they’ve already assumed you’d say no as you’re too busy. When actually, the opposite couldn’t be truer.

But then someone pinged me this week on Facebook, and this afternoon I found myself at Urban Pantry, thoroughly enjoying my linguine and the great company. And talking about non-mumsy things. And feeling HUMAN. A little bit of my old self, peeping through the laid-back jeans and wind-tossed hair. Before I was a mother, I was This Other Person. And she came out and had linguine today.

The shrieking.

Two children playing catch or hide-and-seek or some fusion of both. Their little brother in a stroller, wailing because he is missing out. Their mother, deep in conversation with their grandmother over a pillow. (Seriously, lady. It’s Target. They’ll all go flat in a year.)

Without a word, I swing my pram with its precious, sleeping occupant around, and make a hasty escape to the bathroom section. Quick, quick… before they stampede over to -

Too late. A herd of tiny elephants comes running over. There’s shouts, an over-excited shriek that could break glass, except Target only stocks cheapies.

The pram jolts. I wince and wait for it. One thousand… two thousand…

Arddun awakes with a wail. It starts low, because it’s about to climb the decibel charts and stay at the #1 spot for about two weeks.

She’s at least half an hour early from her wake time. And she’s not happy about it.

Meanwhile, Mother and Grandmother have given up on the pillow and are now moving on to bathroom gear.

I make my exit.

Only to run into them again at the check-out, where they all end up at the cashier adjacent to mine.

Arddun is calm by now. She’s playing with her toes quietly. La-la-la, and holding onto both feet with both hands. Harmless.

Stroller Kid – the one who got left out earlier – takes one look at Arddun’s inner peace and shatters it completely with a sudden, belated shriek.

Another jolt. Arddun completely loses it. She yells so hard, her eyes tear up from the sheer force of her face-scrunch, and her head looks like it’s about to pop.

And the Mother, and the Grandmother. They stare at my bawling baby. And proceed to tut tut about how sensitive my baby is, and how this wouldn’t happen if she had siblings because babies with older siblings can sleep through anything.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

I am so gobsmacked, I actually go blank. The only thing I can think to do is pick Arddun up and cuddle her. To her credit, she has more to say on the matter than I do, because every time she makes eye contact with Stroller Kid, she gives him the evil eye and yells at him.

And the Mother, and the Grandmother. They ask the cashier how many children she has (3) and whether she grew up with lots of siblings (yes, 5), and only child, eh? Nudge nudge. Obviously.

Traitorous mind still in a blank. No comeback. Blind-white fury building, but not quite sure why. Scowling so hard now, my unplucked, mumsy eyebrows are starting to ache. Only thing left to do is throw all purchases into my pram and stiffly wheel it out of Target while jiggling indignant baby on my left hip.

L’esprit de l’escalier. The afterwit – which isn’t very witty at all – is for me to have fronted both obnoxious women with, “I know deep down that you’re only saying this because you know your kids are feral today. You’re embarrassed. I get that. But if it wasn’t bad enough that you’ve chosen to patronise me, did you really have to INSULT MY BABY?!”

Except I really couldn’t have said that, because I remember being one of those kids, running around a shopping mall like a rodent on speed.

Yes. I was a mall rat.

Because Singapore is so stinking hot and humid, we spend most of our days hiding in underground shopping malls and paying for borrowed air-conditioning by pretending to buy things. When I was 9/10/11/12, my family used to swan off to a mall with close friends after Sunday morning worship. We’d have lunch together, perhaps dessert, and then there’d be window shopping for the grown ups. And the other kids and I would beg to go to Toys ‘R’ Us or Kids World. And the adults would let us go because they were probably hoping thinking that we’d spend the half hour or so calmly debating the finer merits of Mattel’s Crystal Barbie and Hasbro’s Transformers (first generation).

Not so.

We were playing catch or hide-and-seek or some fusion of both. I got really bummed out on the weeks I had to wear a dress, because it made climbing and crawling slower. The most impressive hiding place I remember was when the smallest of us climbed up a huge toy shelf and hid behind a row of overstuffed plush toy teddies. The stuff of legends, man.

Sales ladies used to scowl at us till I thought their eyebrows would fuse together from the heat of their killer stares.

So yes. It’d be hypocritical of me to get too narky with the Mother, the Grandmother, and their three little squealies.

But I admit I’ve been fantasising about following them home so we can climb into the Mother’s bedroom at 4am and have Arddun press her sweet little mouth into the Mother’s ear and go,

“EEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

But she has three children. She should be used to that.

It’s Valentine’s Day. Tony and I celebrated yesterday to avoid the 800% price hike across the continent, and today I got some beautiful red roses and watched season 4 of The Tudors. (We’re at the Queen Catherine Howard bit.)

Then I checked my emails and read one that I probably wasn’t supposed to receive, let alone digest and lose sleep over.

Darn Reply All function.

I’ve blogged for almost 10 years now. Started lots of blogs, but they didn’t go very far because I was writing either to vent or psycho-analyse. And then one day, at my most heartbroken, I forgot myself and in a very selfish act, went and burnt many bridges through my writing. And it doesn’t matter how much spax you throw at it. When something like this happens, the bridge doesn’t get built again. You have to go and build a new bridge. Or you build it halfway, and you wait for the other side to respond. Which may never happen.

Some people murder, others steal. I hurt people through clumsy, hot words.

And if you’re reading this and thinking, “Huh? What happened? What’s she talking about? What are the specifics?” – complete dampener here. This post isn’t about rehashing past regrets. But it is about words.

As far as possible, I try to have my insides match my outsides. But this also means that my inside words sometimes shoot past the filter and land on the outside, impaling individuals in the process.

As far as possible, I try to forgive easily. And most of the time, I do. But I really, REALLY struggle with forgiving others who have not forgiven me. Especially after I’d forgiven them, only to find my forgiveness rebuffed and my wrong, forever embossed on their foreheads and their hearts. And then I fall a little bit to pieces.

There’s a video that’s gone viral in the past week. It’s a father’s video response to his teenage daughter’s Facebook rant. Huge spoiler – he shoots her laptop to teach her a lesson. It’s a tit for tat response, father to daughter.

You can watch it for yourself, if you can stomach all of it:

It makes me squirm for so many reasons, chief of which are:

• The daughter reminds me of what I’ve been like.
• The father reminds me of what I’ve been like.
• It’s an awful lesson on parenting.
• I’m almost certainly capable of doing something that desperate and petty to Arddun.

The worst part is how public it all is. Long, loooong after that teenager grows up and marries and has children of her own, that video will be lurking around somewhere on the internet. It’s hard enough trying to forgive and forget… but now there’s a replay button.

What am I trying to say?

On a day when love is celebrated, I received an email that confirmed that I was not loved. Words floating around on the internet, biting me for a change. And perhaps I read too much into it. The email didn’t dwell on specifics. And perhaps I’m being quite melodramatic. Expecting to be loved is a huge ask.

Except I wasn’t asking to be loved. Just forgiven.

Except that I know forgiveness requires the forgiver to love.

Gah.

If there’s one big, multi-pronged life skill I hope to teach Arddun even though I have such a lousy track record myself, it’d be this: the ability to shut up and love her enemies, and bless those who hurt her. I’m thinking real hard about this as I type, because it’d be more simplistic to wish that she could just make friends, not enemies.

But enemies sometimes find you, even when you keep right out of their way. It is the nature of bullies.

And as for forgiveness – the devil is in the detail of remembering. And I pray tonight for a heart that can let go and let God.

That was when I realised another tooth had popped through.

Except it wasn’t quite the tooth I was expecting.

I’ll explain.

This is the chart found behind the Heinz baby rusk box. It states the order in which baby teeth are usually expected to pop through.

This is the order in which Arddun’s teeth have appeared: 1, 1, 7.

Yes. It seems our daughter has grown a fang. Not both, just the one on the left.

Not to worry. We’ve gotten her on a strict three-tooth brushing regime after each meal.

Observe:

While I could blame the lavender pods in Arddun’s room (cheerfully plucked from Mrs Allie’s lavender bush so as to naturally deodorise the nappy bin), or cast aspersions on the prawn curry powder (lovingly bestowed by Auntie Fiji and Arddun’s twin-by-15-hours Leila)… I’m going to go right on and blame the Woolies Check-Out Guy.

After I’d completely lost faith in Coles Gungahlin last weekend, I headed over to Woolies for my shopping on Saturday and ended up in the slowest check-out line in recent history. I had read somewhere that Murphy’s Law does hold true with supermarket check-out queues, as you’re more likely to be caught in the slowest lane than the fastest one because you’re flanked by two lines, and therefore have a 1 in 3 chance of getting served first. Or something like that. I don’t know the actual math but you get the logic.

But anyhoo, Woolies Check-Out Guy was the slowest check-out guy in my recent memory, because Woolies Check-Out Guy had a dastardly cold and was therefore wont to move like a drugged wombat.

In fact, he sneezed so much and lingered so lovingly over my fruit and veg, it took great self control not to squeal, “GAAAAHHHH!” and break open the new – and as yet unpaid – baby anti-bacterial wipes to mop down all my produce AND the Woolies Check-Out Guy. (His supervisor popped her head around midway to hand her sniffly employee a wad of tissues. Not quite the health and safety standards I was hoping for, but thoughtful nonetheless.)

What really gave me the palpitations, however, was his flagrant disregard for my shopping bag system.

Even before the ACT government declared a fatwa on supermarket shopping bags in a tokenistic effort at reducing our carbon footprint, I had a system. At the check-out conveyor belt, I would group my groceries methodically, and then place the appropriate type of shopping bag on top of each group.  All uncooked meats would go into a freezer bag. All fruit and veg would go into two lime-green shopping bags, then non-food items (usually heavy) in the dark-green bags with the short handles, and then finally all dairy and cold meats would go in the second freezer bag.

So I have 5 bags. Sometimes 6. I plan it so that each bag would be easy enough for me to carry, and the cooked and uncooked items remain apart. I have a system.

Woolies Check-Out Guy took one look at my system in his flu-addled state, sniffed at it, and proceeded to squish all my groceries into 3 shopping bags. The only favour he did me was to remember to place the bread on top. He forgot to do the same for the eggs.

And I tried to tell him how the system worked. I suggested, and I guided, and I grunted, and at one point I think this high-pitched eeeeeee escaped the back of my throat despite myself. Each time, the kindly Woolies Check-Out Guy would look up, as if slightly stunned, and offer to unpack everything and start over. And I had a choice. Shopping Bag System in disarray, or evil eyes from the rest of the queue about to fling both me and my $129.90 groceries list back to Coles Gungahlin. I chose to avoid the evil eyes, and had to stop the cardiac arrest about to engulf me while I skulked out of the supermarket with my Three Bags (Very) Full… and a litter of unused ones trailing in my wake.

———————————-

I’ve been reading about how the French parent their young (very chic, very cool) and how to groom your child so she learns to play independently. Both roughly touch on the concept of Hyperparenting –  where parents lurk around their child like hovercrafts and provide so much guidance, there’s little wiggle room to stuff up.

It’s micro-management, in corporate speak.

It’s the parent who pulls the child up every time her enthusiastic crayons go over the black outline.

It’s the parent who teaches the child the “proper” way to build a house out of Lego.

It’s the parent who probably has trouble allowing the Woolies Check-out Guy to place the uncooked meats in the green bag with the short handles, instead of the blue freezer bag. I’m guessing.

Here’s the news flash, here’s the grand Uh Oh: Hyperparenting is in my bones. It’s part of being Singaporean. It’s how we speak to one another, how we show love and concern – to our children, to our friend’s children, to grown men and women. No one is exempt. There is this invisible divide, this unwritten age of entry – I’m thinking about 30 – and after you cross it, you are free to first ask your loved ones what they had for dinner, and then proceed to tell them when they should settle down and make lots of babies.

We look at a situation, and immediately see room for improvement. We love by providing advice – almost involuntarily like hiccups – so that our loved ones follow a path imagined in our heads, and don’t stray from it even a little. Perhaps it stems from the top, because our government is paternalistic. Also, Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother? Asian. Not a coincidence.

And yet…

How much of all that is guidance, and how much of that is projection of unfulfilled dreams? How much of that is absolute right and wrong, and how much of that is vague and inconstant opinion? When do we steer the child for her real betterment, and when do we snuff out the fun of exploration? It doesn’t matter if the child is three or threescore. We steer and steer, we suggest, we manipulate. Even though we know that the best lessons – the lessons that stick – are the ones we learn through experience.

I come from a pretty chilled out family, on balance. Was allowed to forge my own way most of the time, except when I went off the rails every now and then. I’m the only child of a single parent, so as much as we are very close and loving, it wasn’t feasible for my mother to be a hyperparent. It also isn’t her style.

But as chilled out and loving as my mother is, she had a couple of absolutes that weren’t really absolutes. One of them was the way laundry ought to be hung out to dry. The hangers, you see, all had to face the right. That way, when it came time for me to take the hangers down from the bamboo pole, I could unhook all of them in the one direction. It was efficient.

It used to drive her nuts how I’d have the hangers facing left AND right in no seeming pattern. They all had to face right. Not left, and certainly not both ways. She’d get on my case whenever she saw how I did the hangers. No alternatives were allowed. It didn’t have to be logical. It just had to be done her way.

What my mother didn’t know – and what I couldn’t articulate at the time – was that I got so bored doing laundry, I kept it interesting by making it as difficult as possible for me to get the clothes down from the bamboo pole using the hook.

Arddun’s going to grow up in a different family, with a different dynamic. She has different parents. (She has two, for starters.) An hour after I’d fumed over Woolies Check-out Guy to Tony, I thought about my crazy fixation with the bag packing and imagined the gazillion other ways I’d potentially drive my daughter batty.

I am a free spirit. And if my daughter turns out to be even remotely creative and interested in the world around her, I pray I’ll not kill her spirit.

And so I ask for wisdom.

To accept the things I don’t really need to change;
Courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.