Adino Online

I know it’s almost the middle of December, but I’m still publishing some photos of Caleb taken from last month.

As at November, Caleb is three months old.

To record down his physical development, he can flip over from his back and vice versa. He can raise his head up to look around.

His arms and legs are gaining strength. He doesn’t have the co-ordination to grasp items, but he can reflexively grasp our shirt.

He has grown much taller and heavier. In terms of body size, he’s wearing the same clothes Daryl used to wear when he was six months old. If Caleb continues growing at this rate, he will be bigger than Daryl!

Caleb doesn’t like to spend a lot of time on his back. Within seconds he will turn over, so we can’t leave him alone on the bed anymore. He might roll off the bed!

He smiles when he sees Rachel or Daryl around. I think Caleb enjoys being the centre of attention.

Caleb also likes to suck his thumb and all his fingers.

In terms of mental development, I don’t know how to describe it but I can see he is sentient. You know, like there’s an intelligent being looking back at you.

When babies are born, they don’t do much except cry and sleep. Even when looking at you, you can’t really tell if they know they are looking at you. It’s like looking at a puppy.

When they reach a certain age, they start observing the world. They have memory and remembrance. Now Caleb is at that stage. He’s starting to observe me when I look at him.

And I know that he knows who I am.

So our relationship as father and son moves to another level. Previously he may remember my voice or my scent, but now I am starting to register in his brain as daddy.

It’s the same with his brother and sister. They’re starting to play with him, and he can recognize who they are.

Photo of Caleb opening his eyes, observing.

He’s losing all his fine newborn hair.

In terms of personality, he seems to be quite cheerful. He can be quite talkative.

He is relatively easy to take care of. He’s happy if you keep him fed and changed.

Thank God his health is good. He hardly ever gets sick compared to Daryl.

His diet is still 100% breast milk. He’s putting on weight and getting chubby. And the chubbier he gets, the more he looks like Daryl.

In the next few weeks we’re just hoping for him to continue getting stronger and avoid getting sick.

Poey Chin keeps hoping he will stay a baby and I keep hoping he grows up a bit quicker haha.

Our failed attempt at a family photo, because Rachel was making funny faces.

Caleb always has this surprised look.

Rachel has grown up rather quickly in the past few months.

She’s three and-a-half years old, but she seems to behave older than that. Maybe she mixes with older kids at her daycare, but the way she speaks seems to be beyond her years.

She has grown taller now, and she’s lost her baby chubbiness.

She loves to dress up, do up her hair and put on perfume.

Rachel has mastered her ABCs. Now she’s learning phonic sounds and I’m teaching her to read.

She likes to do colouring and writing.

She’s too young to really know how to write. She can trace the words but take away the guide and she can’t remember how to write.

There are a lot of useful YouTube videos that are excellent resources to teach Rachel how to read.

Poey Chin is a huge influence on Rachel. Rachel follows everything she does, from the way she walks, to the way she moves and even the way she talks.

She always wants to play “mother” to Caleb, but we are still watchful.

Sometimes my mother will occupy Rachel’s attention with some computer games.

Rachel loves playing this memory game, which I think is useful for her mental development.

She loves doing jigsaw puzzles too.

I still have my frustrating moments with Rachel. You would expect her to grow out of her “baby” stage but sometimes she will be so unreasonable and be worse than her baby brothers.

She really upsets me sometimes… she can be so stubborn.

But I still love her so much, even if I’m strict with her. She can be so sweet and adorable.

She is starting to understand things if we take the time to explain to her the reasons.

I’m really happy that she stopped making a fuss before going to daycare. It’s a normal part of her daily routine now.

In the next few months I hope she can continue learning, and she will learn to be more understanding and obedient.

It’s been a while since I’ve recorded down the progress of Daryl boy.

He’s one and-a-half years old, and has mastered walking and running. He is starting to climb up on our dining chairs.

He and Rachel run around the house screaming (driving me mad), but he’s still a bit clumsy on his feet.

Daryl is so active now that it’s tiring to keep up with him.

He insists on holding a spoon during mealtimes, with comical results.

In terms of speech, he can pretty much imitate the words we say, but in baby talk. He can communicate by pointing around and using some words.

He can sing along to his favourite songs, but he only knows the last word of each line (e.g. twinkle twinkle little STAR, how i wonder what you ARE).

Every time we go out, he will repeat the words Nut Nut and Ant Ants! Funny how he can still remember that.

He is starting to get a sense of humour. He can laugh at silly jokes, especially while playing with Rachel.

In terms of social development he’s quite shy, but he will gladly chat with any kakak he sees.

His teeth have all developed, with the exception of the molars beside his incisors.

We estimate he weighs the same as Rachel now.

We are starting to read books to him. He can recognize pictures like duck and cat but his attention span is pretty short, can’t sit more than 5 minutes.

He can sit longer when watching videos. We usually play him some Barney DVDs or some nursery rhymes on YouTube.

He is starting to become very demanding. One time we were at a quiet Japanese restaurant and we were so embarassed because he kept screaming.

He screamed because he wanted to drink my green tea and eat my rice. I was feeding him but he wouldn’t wait for me to cut the food in smaller portions.

A little preview of the coming terrible twos I suppose.

In the next few months I’m hoping that he can get more stable on his feet, then we won’t have to worry about him falling down.

I know he’s going to keep testing his boundaries but I hope we will be able to deal with it better.

Recently I asked myself some questions. What is my hobby? What are my passions?

I really could not come out with an answer. So I asked my wife.

And she replied, “playing games.”

I was contemplating her statement in my mind, thinking if gaming actually qualifies as a hobby.

I mean, normal hobbies are reading, sports, fishing and collecting stuff right?

Then she added, “you’re addicted to games.”

“Addicted?”, I denied. “I’m not addicted.”

“Yes, you are.” she said.

Then I started to think when this addiction started (feel free to skip to the end if you have no interest in my life history).

Childhood

Like any young boy, I loved video games. I still remember we would go to those shops where you can pay RM1 to play for half an hour.

I can’t recall any specific games, but I can still remember Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-A-B-A-B-Select-Start.

I wouldn’t say I was addicted, but I remember games could take up my interest and attention for a long time.

Teenager

I remember a few things related to video games. First of all, we were always obsessed over video game arcades. For some strange reason, our beloved government only allowed those above 18 years old to go into video game arcades.

This created a desperation to get my hands on Street Fighter 2. I convinced my parents to buy me a Super-NES so I “didn’t have to go to those game arcades with smoking gangsters”.

The second memory is the first time I installed a sound card on my computer. Some of you may remember the days when computers only played silly 8-bit music from the speakers, and you actually had to pay RM300 just for music and sound.

My friends and I messed around with our computers, trying to get games working (and sharing them on 1.2MB 5 1/2 inch diskettes).

I truly fell in love with computers when I was 14, and that decided my career.

There was a year when I stopped playing games , totally abstaining in 1997 when I was in Form 5.

College

College days were the days when the Internet was starting to become available.

My fondest memory was playing Diablo with a bunch of strangers on Battle.net. The game quickly became boring (due to cheaters and hackers), but I enjoyed the chat forum so much.

The Internet was a pretty boring place back then, so another platform took my attention: the Sony PlayStation.

Working

When I started working I resumed my gaming habits, purchasing a PlayStation 2.

Then Warcraft 3 and DotA came along.

I spent so much time playing games, often until 3 am in the morning.

Facebook

I remember when I first joined Facebook there wasn’t anything you could do except poke people.

Then they released their platform to developers and games started coming up. Companies started to develop better games and I was totally hooked.

Most of the games had an element of time, where you had to login every few hours to play the game or risk falling behind your competitors.

I would quit a game only to find another new game taking up my attention.

I even started a separate account just to play games!

It’s Not That Bad

I’ve just re-read everything I wrote and I think I should be checked in to some clinic immediately.

I know some of you feel like dragging your children to the screen to point to my blog and tell them, “see this uncle? See he play games all his life? See la, you play games some more la? See this addict? Don’t follow this uncle”

But I hope you take into consideration that I’m just sharing one of the things I did during all those years. It’s not like I played games non-stop for my entire life.

I did finish school, completed college, started a career and had a family at the same time.

I also want to point out that I learned a lot from games, because they force me to explore new worlds all the time.

I’ve Changed

If you ask me to stop totally, it would not be possible. Games are fun, and I admit I enjoy playing games.

I’ve come to a conclusion and realization that many games offer no real value. They suck you into their world and get you to do repetitive tasks like watering and harvesting crops.

So I’ve quit most of them.

I hardly login to Facebook any more. There are no video game consoles in my house. There are no computer games installed on my PC.

I only have a few games installed on my phone, though I admit I’ve been spending too much time on Defender in the past couple of weeks.

I’ve been playing Glitch, which is interesting because it’s funny, it’s a large world and you get to do a lot. But honestly I’m losing interest. Haven’t even logged in in the past week.

Conclusion

So back to my original question.

Is this my hobby? Definitely!

Is this an addiction? I think my wife is right.

Recently Poey Chin and I observed the 5th anniversary of our wedding engagement.

I say observed because we did not celebrate or do anything special other than giving each other a hug and a kiss.

Then we went back to observing the kids.

I don’t know. I’m really bad at this. The first year we probably celebrated this special date (but honestly I can’t recall what we did). Now it’s the fifth year and I didn’t even buy flowers.

I guess I’m just a typical male.

Maybe by next year I won’t even remember the date anymore haha…

*cricket chirping*

Before Poey Chin thinks about asking me to sleep on the sofa, let me distract her with this photo!

Daryl: “Buji buji bear BEAR!”

I gave this bear to Poey Chin when I proposed.

One day we were at Lovely Lace and she said this bear was soooo cute.

A few days later I sneaked to the Lovely Lace store at the mall (which sounds like a lingerie shop but it’s NOT!!).

I walked in, approached the sales assistant and pointed at the bear, “I want that bear”.

She looked rather surprised and proceeded to take the longest time to pack the bear.

In the mean time, I was getting all sorts of allergies from the overpowering scents in the store.

In the end she rolled the bear into a ball and stuffed it in two large plastic bags, not managing to fit everything in the bag.

I walked out of the store holding this giant, red plastic bag. Everyone could see the bear’s hand sticking out.

I felt like a serial killer. Then I had to hide it in my car boot, hoping Poey Chin would not see it.

My plan was to use the bear as a distraction. I showed Poey Chin the bear, and she was so happy. All her attention was on the bear.

I went to get the flowers and engagement ring and knelt down behind her back, waiting for her to turn around.

The silly romantic things young people do.

Nowadays it has become Daryl’s “bear bear”. He drags it around by the head because it’s so big, and the head is starting to tear loose from the body.

Oh well.

I just want to end this blog post by saying how wonderful these years have been.

I had given up on love, deciding to live forever alone until Poey Chin came along.

She changed my life, made it better beyond my wildest expectations.

And it all started from the first words I heard from her lips, “I’m missing Klang seafood to meet your band…”

But that’s a story for another anniversary!

P/S: Poey Chin would never ask me to sleep on the sofa. I would enjoy that too much, watching TV till the late hours, and the luxury of sleeping without any of the kids disturbing me.

P/P/S: I want to highlight another anniversary. This blog is almost 5 years old! You can jump back and start reading my very first blog post about our engagement.