I awake. It’s 5.45am. I instinctively reach out to the baby monitor to check on you. You’re still asleep. So, I head to the bathroom. You stir at around 6.25am. I reach for the monitor again. I see you lift your head up, eyes wide open as you survey your room quietly. You crawl briskly towards the far corner of your cot to grab your two toys, a soft rabbit puppet and a blue cat. You start lifting both toys up, swinging them about. It’s how you play. I resist the urge to get up, walk to your room and bring you over to ours. It’s a bittersweet moment for me, to see you enjoy playing on your own quietly, independently while at the same be reminded that growing up is a process that happens in increments of days for you, not years.
It’s only been 385 days since you were plucked well, violently into this world. 384 days since I held you for the first time, on a single arm (these days I can barely contain you with two). Only 383 days since you would wake up every 1.5 hours throughout the night needing a feed. Only 350 days since we brought you back and placed you on your own bed, as you rang your cries through the night, reminding us that independence is rarely achieved quietly. Only been 304 days since we cheered as you learned to turn on to your side, and then on to your tummy a few weeks later. 273 days since we started training you to sleep better, as you again reminded us that you are not the sort to go too quietly into the night. It’s been 182 days since you tasted your first piece of chicken, and just like that, diaper changes went from ‘comfortable’ to ‘contagion’. 168 days since you learned to crawl, which has evolved from you pulling yourself forward on your tummy, to engaging your knees and now settled into what can best be described as ‘sliding your butt across the floor’ (I can recognise innovation when I see it). 152 days since you went on your first out of town trip where you bravely got into a pool for the first time and helped us break a possible record for the longest journey up north that can be achieved without traffic (waves trophy). Oh, only 121 days since you gurgled your first babble, ending months of your mama’s anxiety if you would ever utter a word (you’ve uttered a thousand back a day since to remind her of her folly). 60 days since you learned to say ‘Mama’. 14 days since you learned to say ‘Dada’ and 7 days since you learned to wake up without crying to play independently on your own.
Days, not years.
Papa has had his life turned inside out, tumble dried and turn back out again in this one year. Like a sweater turned over, ready for a wash, I was understandably reeling initially from all the change. Well, not struggling or anything. Just having to learn a lot of new things in a very short space of time. I was thrust almost unbeknownst into this new life, and I had to challenge myself to think of different things and different ways to do things immediately. It was both exhilarating and of course, daunting. And for a moment, papa’s life looked a little unrecognisable. So like a sweater that’s inside out, it retained the outline and form of the life I had butt a lot of it looked different.
As I watch you hold yourself up to the couch, imitate the words we use or laugh at banal things and acts, I am constantly reminded that day-by-day, you are slowly learning how to live this life. In many ways, that was what papa had to do as well.
Papa had to learn how to walk all over again, especially when I am carrying you. I had to learn that when I push open a swing-back door and step in, there is more to accommodate now when you are in my hands, so I must either step in quicker, or push the door open wider. Papa has had to learn how to organise dishes of food on a dining table in a way where everything is out of reach from your curious hands while me and mama can still eat. Papa has had to learn how to park a car differently, to look for spaces where there are gaps on your side of the door, so it is easier to load and unload your baby seat. Papa has had to be comfortable with singing a lot more than he normally does, from inventing shower songs for you to singing you lullabies to sleep. Papa has had to learn to cook differently, just for you. To rethink food into different shapes and sizes that are suitable for you now. Papa has had to learn how to nap differently these days because now he naps with you also napping on his chest so he can’t fully sleep away the afternoon like he used to.
So just like how you are learning each day how to live in this world, papa and mama are also learning each day how to be the best parents we can be to you. We are all learning, and it feels so exciting.
Little by little, papa’s life is starting to turn back out again as I learn the ropes more and more. The sweater is slowly turning back out to the right side again.
Papa used to wonder, before he became a papa, why some people often shade away their own interests for their children’s when they become parents. It’s like suddenly everything about their life is their children and all the things they used to love seems to disappear from their lives. Now that papa is a papa, he can sort of understand why. There was a time when one of the happiest things papa could do was to go to concert to watch a band he likes. So of course, papa would go watch concerts often because it made him happy. These days, nothing makes papa happier than to see you smile and laugh. It beats watching the best band in the world, play papa’s favourite song. So why wouldn’t I want to bring you for a walk in the park, visit the aquarium or play ball with you at home as often as I can? Going to concerts still makes papa happy so he still will do that but it’s no longer the thing that makes papa the happiest.
There is a moment every morning when you are between me and mama, she is nursing you and you are holding on to me with your tiny hands. That moment is perfect. Adults use that word a little too generously sometimes but not many moments in our lives can properly live up to actual perfection. This one does. We are both assuming a collective protective posture towards you our cub, cocooning you in our embrace, reminding you that you are safe and loved. You reciprocate by smiling at us, reaching your hands towards ours. It’s as if you’re telling mama and papa that you know. Yes, perfection. And for that 20-minutes, nothing else in the world matters. Not the work that awaits us, the bulging traffic below us nor the usual anxieties that pepper adult lives.
There is just us, and it is perfect.
adrianyapck 