The sisters and I took Kaylin to Jungle Gym at Bangsar Shopping Centre the other day. It was Kaylin’s third time, my sisters’ first. Kaylin was pretty excited to hear she was going – I’d never seen her come down the stairs so fast before – but once we were inside, I have to say, my sisters’ were way more excited than she was.
I really like Jungle Gym. I’ve seen quite a few play lands around the KL/PJ area, and this one is by far the best. It’s huge, with tons of different sections like a trampoline, ball pit, giant slides, etc., and a really cool warren of tunnels and stuff for the kids to run through. Also, it’s free entry for kids below two. I don’t get around to going very often, but when I do, all of that makes the drive to BSC very worth it.
Warning: Proud mummy commentary to follow.
Kaylin went down the giant slide all by herself! I thought since I had someone to catch her at the bottom, I’d send her down and see what happened. The first time, she sort of slid sideways just past the halfway mark and, because she’s so small, landed at the bottom almost completely horizontal and with her dress in her face. I thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t, and asked to go again! This is her second go. (That sound you hear on the video is Bec, shrieking on Kaylin’s behalf.)
And here we all are, in the nice, big ball pit. Luckily, there was only one other kid around so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Which was awesome. My sisters and I never did this when we were kids, but it’s never too late. I love how Kaylin’s staring up at her aunties as if she’s going, ‘Dude, what’s with these people?’
Project 365 is probably one of the most ambitious things I’m going to attempt this year. To actually remember to take a photo every single day of the year is not as easy as it sounds. It’s only been 12 days and I’ve already found myself taking last minute photos at 11.30pm, or yes, taking two photos a day because I forgot the day before. Here are the first 10:
001: I wanted the start the new year with nature.
002: Kaylin getting soaked through and loving it!
003: My new glasses. A new look for a new chapter. I also finally finished the Harry Potter series.
004: A very special lunch date with someone I hadn’t caught up with in years.
005: Rush hour traffic. One of my resolutions this year is to avoid this.
006: A wedding dinner. As you can see, Kaylin felt right at home.
007: She discovers how to pick her nose!
008: I got sick – the worst since December 2007. Yes, I actually remember.
009: Luckily, it didn’t last long. I was eating Maggi Mee by the next day.
010: Late lunch with Jessie. Love that she’s back, at least for now.
Nobody ever told me that in addition to diapers and formula and clothes and toys, I would also be forking out hundreds of ringgit to replace my glasses because Kaylin can twist and turn them into shapes I never thought possible. Like she has superhuman strength or something. The upside to that is, I have new glasses.
This is Kaylin, putting on lip balm while on Skype with grandpa because she wants to show him what she’s learned to do. I think the little princess is growing up far too quickly, but I must say I’m starting to enjoy dressing her up.
Honestly, when she was born, I had no idea how I was going to do it. Shocking, I know, because so many mothers say dressing up their daughters is one of the best things about having a girl.
Here’s one of my favourite outfits for Kaylin so far. Her t-shirt reads ‘Daddy’s Lil’ Super Model’ and she picked out the necklace herself. Some days, she picks the dress she wants to wear too. It’s astounding and terrifying all at the same time.
I was determined not to count down last night. I put on Modern Family (love that show!) and disappeared into it, pointedly ignoring the clock, planning to emerge on the other side. I forgot about the fireworks. At the stroke of midnight, bangs and double booms and pops began and went on for a good five minutes, it felt like. I couldn’t see them from my window, but they sounded impressive. So much for quietly slipping into 2012.
A lot of people seem glad 2011 is over. It was a pretty crappy year in many aspects. But we’re not looking back. It’s over and done and dusted and its remnants swept up and thrown into the rubbish bin. The contents of which will be burned.
2012 is going to be an adventure. Hopefully, not in a Roland Emmerich kind of way. I’m even thinking about attempting Project 365, where I take a photo every single day for the entire year. Just typing it out makes me want to laugh. Um, we’ll see. Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to more love, more hope and more faith in the world.
With just one day to go before the New Year, I’m excited. The last 12 months have passed by far too quickly, but I think I’ve made the most of them. I don’t remember ever being bored, I love what I’m doing, and I am looking forward to what 2012 will bring. There have been steady ups, a couple of downs, and the one constant shining light that is Kaylin. There is so much I want to do that I don’t know if I will ever find the time amidst everyday life to do them all. And that’s a good place to be at.
So I’m ready for this new beginning. My 30th year. I turn 30 in less than eight months. I’ve always regarded that milestone with a mix of excitement and apprehension. It used to mark, for me, the point where young adulthood ends and real adulthood begins. Where I had to stop messing around and experimenting with my life, because I should know where I’m going by then. That was the deadline I set for myself a few years back.
Now, on the brink of this self-imposed deadline, I can’t say I have all the answers, but I think I have worked out the answer that matters. Two words: IT’S OKAY. Turns out, figuring things out wasn’t the goal; getting comfortable with myself while I spend the next 10, 20 years doing that is. I’ve heard so much about the 30s, where people say they are more secure in their identities and they understand themselves better. I think I’d like that.
I don’t have many New Year Resolutions this time. Probably just, stop being such a klutz and avoid driving during peak hour. The former has been a resolution of mine for the last four years. I’m persistent if not successful. And I have a new mantra: This year, I’m going to walk around with the confidence of a Victoria’s Secret Angel.
Some time ago, I wrote about how I was (and still am) on this quest to figure out what my dreams are and what I want. It was liberating and exciting, and it’s something I’m glad I did. That said, I’m now learning that maybe not all my dreams are achievable, and that’s okay.
Celebrities and successful people tell us never to give up on our dreams. I believe them. But I also believe that, in addition to hard work and talent, success is a serendipitous mix of opportunity, circumstance and luck. Read Outliers if you get the chance.
My circumstances tell me I’ll probably never interview the likes of Hugh Jackman or Meryl Streep or ______ (insert A-lister’s name here), and that I almost certainly will never live in LA or New York and become a successful entertainment journalist/scriptwriter there.
(I wanted to say “I’ll never”, but stopped myself. Never say never. Who knows what the future will bring?)
My dreams are important to me because they remind me what I’m passionate about. They encourage me to work harder and get better, and they make me come alive.
But as I was sitting in the car the other day, I suddenly came to this place where I thought, even if I don’t achieve my biggest and wildest dreams, even if I spend the rest of my life just doing what I do in my own little corner of the world, writing what I can, to what tiny audience I can reach, I think I still could be happy.
Last year, I did one of the scariest things I’d done so far with Kaylin – Y and I took her on an eight-hour flight to Melbourne. She cried a couple of times on the way there, and more than a few times on the way back, but we survived. And nobody shot us dirty looks, or at least, none that I saw.
This year, fueled by a mother’s forgetfulness and a dire need to get away for a holiday, I topped last year’s adventure by doing probably the scariest thing I’d done so far with Kaylin – I brought her to Melbourne all by myself.
Ever since a friend told me her daughter cried for over three hours on a flight, I’ve had tiny panic attacks every time I imagined the same thing happening to me. I worry about Kaylin not being able to adjust to the change in air pressure, and about her not being able to sleep and screaming all the way. I’d probably have to throw myself off the plane just to get away from the accusatory stares, the guilt, and the feeling of helplessness.
Sometimes, it’s worth paying more
Kaylin’s not yet two, so she didn’t need her own seat, but I knew there was no way she was going to be able to fit into a regular AirAsia seat with me. We just about managed to squash ourselves into one last year, and that was a good 12 months ago. They have baby bassinets, but even at nine months old, Kaylin had filled it completely, with barely an inch of wriggle room.
So we did the practical (and expensive) thing – we bought AirAsia Premium seats. They were really pricey – over RM4000 for a return ticket – but at least I knew Kaylin and I would both fit into it properly, and because the seats reclined almost all the way, I hoped we would be able to get some sleep. Oh yes, to make it even more challenging, we took the night flight going there.
As I was buying the ticket, I imagined what my fellow Premium class passengers would think when they boarded the flight, eager for some shut-eye in the comfort of the expensive seats they had splurged on, only to see a baby sitting in the very first row. I once saw a tweet that said something along the lines of “Parents who bring babies into first class should be shot”. I never thought I would be one of those parents.
Anything goes, as long as she’s not screaming
As it turned out, the seat next to ours was empty on both flights, so we got two Premium seats to ourselves instead of one. Kaylin fell asleep immediately on the night flight, and I settled her into her very own seat, but because it doesn’t recline completely, she slid a little lower every time she turned, until she finally reached the footrest and woke up. And stayed awake.
From 4am to 6am Malaysian time (that’s actually 7am-9am Melbourne time, but does it matter? At which point do you start thinking in your destination timezone anyway?) she stayed determinedly awake, and took great pleasure in exploring every inch of her generous seat, walking up and down it, peering over the back of it, playing with the reading light, while I… actually, I don’t remember what I did.
When she’d finally used up all her energy, I let her play with my iPhone (in airplane mode) sitting on my lap until we both fell asleep, only for me to wake up and discover she’d made 42 unsuccessful attempts to call my boss.
Be prepared – and then add about a dozen more toys
For the flight back, a dear and very smart friend gave Kaylin a backpack filled with goodies – books, stickers, snacks and accessories – which proved to be a lifesaver because she slept all of one hour throughout the entire flight! I had an iPhone, an iPad, a couple of books and one or two snacks. I thought I was prepared… until I saw the backpack.
We spent hours eating everything in the bag and flipping through books, then spent another hour or so putting stickers on each other. Kaylin eventually went back to the gadgets, but not before we’d managed to kill three to four hours, which on a long-distance flight is gold.
The good thing about traveling with a well-behaved baby is that everyone who could have been hating you suddenly loves you instead. The flight crew kept coming over to say hello and offer assistance, and a lovely couple even offered to help me carry my bag to the terminal when we arrived back at KL. This time, I’m pretty sure nobody gave us a dirty look.
This is Kaylin at her first kids’ pool party. It’s her second time in a swimming pool, not that she did any swimming at all. In fact, as you can tell, her hair is completely dry. She never went deeper than knee-high water, and she couldn’t be bothered trying.
This photo was taken on a ledge that separated the deep pool and the shallow pool, which my baby girl insisted on walking along all by herself. I told her that if she fell in after all her effort avoiding actually swimming, I was going to laugh at her. But I still kept one hand sort of on her, just in case. The camera was in the other hand. It’s one of those everything-proof types so I wasn’t worried. My biggest concern really was that I didn’t fall into the pool because I had no change of clothes.
This is how inexperienced I am with pool parties. I forgot my own change of clothes, Kaylin’s afternoon milk feed, and toys. Everyone else came with buckets and balls and floating contraptions. It never even occurred to me that I should get Kaylin something. But at least we were there. I’m trying to be a little more adventurous with my baby. I knew just one person in the group, but look, I have a job that requires me to interview people all the time so I’m obviously capable of striking up a conversation with strangers if I have to. I just need to try.
So I went. And I tried – a little. And I had a good time. And Kaylin had a great time. And I thought, this mummy/baby socialising stuff is tiring as heck but I probably should make an effort more often.
