Second

Gareth is the second to be added to our family. He's 6 years old this year, and a whole different ballgame compared to his older sister. You know how in school, we used to be taught that molecules are moving all the time, even in solids, but especially so in gaseous form, and they are just flying all over the place, bouncing off whatever they come into contact with, like a wall, objects, etc? We were also taught that molecules move faster when they are hot, right? Well, picture a molecule that is superheated, and enlarge it a gazillion fold: tada! You have my son!

Only he's not powered by heat. The boy's fuel is sugar, in all its glorious forms. People tell me there's no scientific basis to the phenomenon known as "sugar rush", but well, if that's the null hypothesis, spend half a day 10 minutes with my son after he's had a slice of cake, or egg tart, or mango pudding, I guarantee you'll reject it right away.

You see him above in his Captain America costume. He's crazy about superheroes right now, and I must confess, that's partly my fault. I'm a big superhero comics fan, and I started introducing him to all these characters, and even make him memorize their alter egos(seriously, he even knows the Falcon's real name!) and test him afterwards. Then Marvel has to come up with all these super duper awesome superhero movies, I mean, they have to share the blame too!

Anyway, he's got quite a collection of superhero toys and accessories now, with this:

being just a sample.

He's not overly obsessed about superheroes though(at least, I keep telling myself that). He's crazy about Lego sets, especially those with superheroes(waitaminit...), and he loves to play soccer too. I started playing with him from young, as evidenced by this photo:

and now he's attending a soccer school regularly. I have wild hopes of him blazing a trail in his subsequent schools, and then country, and maybe even internationally!(a man can dream) What's more, his favourite EPL club is Tottenham Hotspur, which happens to be my favourite club. What a happy coincidence!

He's a real source of energy in the house. You know the saying,"Don't try to run before you can walk"? Well, that's got nothing on my son. He never walks, only runs.

Love him deep deep.

First

This is my firstborn, Chloe. She turns 9 this year, which of course means she is in Primary 3. It seems like an eternity ago when she was born, an event which turned out to be more exciting than we anticipated or hoped for. See, my wife and I were shopping for a new table for our home, she having been pregnant for just under 34 weeks. The full term for a baby is at 40 weeks, but a baby born before 37 weeks is considered premature.

So there we were, having just bought our table, when my wife had to go to the toilet. When she came out, she told me that she seemed to be leaking urine, but it didn't smell like urine. We hurriedly went back home, verified that it probably wasn't urine(don't ask me how), which meant that it was likely that her water bag had broken. She called the hospital, which asked her to check in to the labour ward immediately. I of course maintained my composure, and calmly told my panicking wife to cool down, everything will be alright, and drove her straight to the hospital. If you happen to know my wife, and heard a different story, about how I was the one who panicked and ran up and down the house like a madman, that was a lie. A blatant lie, I tell ya!

Anyhoo, everything turned out fine, and our baby girl was born 2 days later, at a tiny 1.950kg. My goodness, that feeling when I first held her in my arms. Fathers will know it. It just felt so amazing and miraculous that I was holding a little bundle of life that had a part of me coursing through her veins, that I helped bring this life into existence. It was something I will never forget.

Unfortunately, because she was premature, she was kept in the high dependency ward for the most of the first 1-2 weeks, and we were unable to take too many pictures. After a quick rummaging, this is one of the earliest pictures of her, at about 1 month:

As time went, she grew,

and grew,

and grew,

and grew.

And now she is 9(see first pic at beginning of post). All these years, there was so much joy, a lot of tears, ups and downs, but importantly, we grew together. I learnt, and am still learning, how to be a better father to her everyday, and even though there are days when things don't go so well, when we are not laughing together, I thank God that our bond grows stronger and stronger, and I can see in her eyes that she knows I love her with all my heart. One day, of course, she will have her own family, and will not be with my wife and myself in the way she is now, but I cherish every moment I have with her right now, and I try to build as beautiful a memory as I can of her childhood for her.

Love you, sweetie.

The start of a chronicled journey

I must confess, this is my second attempt at a blog. I was too lazy at maintaining the first one, not writing and posting regularly, until I actually became ashamed to go back to it. So why try again?

Two reasons.

Since young, I've been telling everyone that I love to write, that it's been my passion, and I always dreamed of becoming a prolific author, writing bestseller after bestseller, entertaining millions and earning billions(I'm not materialistic, I'm okay with the other way around too). Yet I often feel like a hypocrite, because I never got round to actually writing anything substantial, like a novel, or even a collection of short stories. It always seems like at any one time, I have something more important to do, like finish my exams, then get settled in my work, then get married, then after my postgraduate degree, et cetera, et cetera. And now, at the ripe old age of 37, I have yet anything to show for in the way of literary works. So I tried to write a blog a few years ago, tried to progress this dream of mine. Well, that crashed and burned. Why do I think it will work now? That brings me to reason number two.

My wife and I recently found out that we are going to have our fifth child. Nope, not a typo. FIFTH. No. 5. Lima. 第五个. Can you imagine that? Who has five kids these days?? This is almost.....masochistic behaviour!

Anyway, as we were mulling over the prospect of adding one more to our already crazy madhouse of a family, a fellow church member told us of a mother in our church who has 4 kids, and is actually thinking of having up to 6 children! After getting over our disbelief that anyone would want to voluntarily do this to herself, we found out that she works by running a blog, sharing about her family, and how she copes as a mother. Curious, I visited the blogsite, and was impressed by what I saw. The writing was novel and interesting, the pictures posted were beautiful, and I could see why it was a successful blog.

I then realised that there are many blogsites set up by mothers, talking about motherhood, family, and raising kids, things most mothers could relate to, and they sort of provide a source of comfort to mothers, reassuring that they are not alone in this long, arduous, terribly difficult journey. I mean, even Frodo needed Sam, right?

It then struck me that there are hardly any blogsites detailing the adventures of fathers. In fact, I don't know of any blogsite like that. I'm sure there must be, but surely the number must be a lot smaller than motherhood blogsites. So I started thinking, why not start a blog about how a father copes? The role of a father in the family has been, in my personal opinion, underrated for far too long, not helped by the popular media, with movies and TV shows about family depicting fathers mostly as simple-minded, beer-chugging, football-watching, backside-scratching men, not caring about taking care of the children, and whose only contribution to the family appears to be bringing home money. Sounds familiar, Simpsons fans?

Anyway, being a father is so much more, should be so much more, and I want to bring this to greater awareness, and hopefully get people to start thinking about what it means to be a father a lot more, and maybe show a bit more appreciation to fathers. I mean, it would be nice to have one or two songs dedicated to fathers for once, don't you think?

One more selling point to my blog. My five kids. Okay, the fifth one is still in my wife's womb, but it's only a matter of time. So even if there are other blogsites about fatherhood out there, I can still boast, "Ah, but does he have five children?"

I'm not good with IT stuff, or pictures, videos, whatnot. So my blog looks pretty simple right now, no fancy gadgets or whatever. But I'll try to post pictures to make things more interesting. I want to slowly introduce you to my wife and kids too. After all, this is a bit of a journal as well, recording down all the memories, so that my kids can look back on moments like this:

and laugh.

Okay then, keep an eye on this space. Do share with others if you enjoy my posts, and leave any comments that you may have. Would love to share and discuss everyone's experiences as a father.

Signing off for now.