the littlest notebook

Good job, Mei-mei!

By Ian’s standards, Ibby is a relatively easy baby. She is slow to cry, and unless she is overtired or hungry, she is easily placated. She is happy to stay in her baby gym long enough for me to wash bottles and make a cup of coffee, or even have lunch. When she fusses at night, she tries to soothe herself back to sleep. She also loves to “talk.” We grunt and coo a lot. Yesterday, I thought she said Hallo (I must be imagining things). She smiles with pleasure when we play with her–she especially likes acting out Humpty Dumpty on my knee–and she tries to sing along with me (I am imagining things again) during music time. She is starting to roll over, and can push herself on her side. She is your regular curious little baby: she sucks on her fists and fingers and tries to eat her toys. Whereas Ian is always very task-oriented with his milk, it is taking longer to feed Ibby these days, now that her eyesight is developing and nearly everything distracts her from the bottle: Ian pretending to be a kangaroo, the TV, the leaves rustling outside our window.

I am very grateful for my children. I put myself in their shoes and I get an inkling of how hard it must be to be a child. My kids go where we as parents decide to go and they have to fit their routines to ours. So much of how happy they feel relies on how well we read their signs or interpret what they are saying; if you are a three-year-old boy just learning how to say M&Ms (Ian says M-m-Ms, with the right inflections), you don’t always get what you want; if you are a three-month-old baby, lagi worse! They must feel a disorienting lack of control over themselves and their circumstances. Because I am the older child in my family, I remember how it was like when my brother was born, and I am (overly) empathetic towards my son. There was a moment in my childhood when I distinctly felt that my world was falling apart. I know at some point, many firstborns must feel this way; the crucial thing is that we as parents have to change that situation into an opportunity for learning and growing. We explain to Ian that Mei-mei is young and helpless, and we need to care for her so that she can grow big and strong. We tell him that Ibby wants to do things on her own but she still is not able to. We tell him how much she wants to be like her kor-kor, to be able to run and jump and eat all sorts of things. I try to make time alone with Ian, and I want to be the one who puts him to bed at night. We always tell Ian how much we enjoy spending time with him and that we love him because he is our one-and-only Ian. Just the other day, I asked him if he knew I loved him and he said yes. I asked him, do you know why Mama loves you? He said it was because he was a special boy. Curious now, I asked him how he knew he was special, and he said “I am your son.”

In more ways that one, my children have made me a better person. Because they are so reliant on me, I have to be strong for them. And when I am weak, I have to show them where to find hope. They have definitely saved me from being the self-indulgent, pessimistic victim that I thought I was. They have shown me that I have a God who cares, and who guards His own. It is mind-blowing to come face-to-face with the marvel of creation every day as I look upon the faces of my little ones. And in each smile, each milestone, each I love you, I am touched again by how lovingly and intricately and wisely our God has made each masterpiece.

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