The scare

Fever. Two weekends in a row.

Louis had some low-grade fever the previous weekend when we celebrated Faith's birthday. We saw the doctor and the latter was not concerned as his injured knee looked alright.

The last weekend, he again had fever. This time around, the fever was much higher - the highest at 38.8C. Again, it didn't abate much even with medications. His left knee swelled quite considerably, looking like a little round ball, giving us cause for concern.

We made an appointment to see his doctor again yesterday. The doctor said that there was some fluid that might caused the swelling. He drew a vial of liquid from the knee -- which was yellowish looking -- and also another small vial of blood. Both vials of fluid were sent for analysis.

The doctor was certain that there was no pus in the fluid that he drew out from the knee. A lab analysis was ordered to determine if there were any micro-organisms found in the fluid from the knee. If there was, Louis would knee to go for another minor surgery to clean the knee.

In the meantime, he was prescribed antibiotics, paracetamol and arcoxial to bring down the swell and we were told to return the next day for a review based on the lab results. The medicine helped considerably. After 2 dosage of it yesterday, the fever went down. This morning, the swelling on his knee went down slightly.

The results this morning when we saw the doctor was a big relief. There wasn't any bacterial or micro-organisms found in the liquid. The blood test result came out alright too, other than the fact that Louis is a little anemic, which he has always been.

He now has to complete the cause of antibiotics and arcoxial. Hopefully, that would help to bring the swelling of the knee back to what it was previously. If there is still any swelling, I gather the doctor will draw out any excess fluid through the syringe.

Whatever it is, this is definitely a much better option than if there were micro-organisms found in his knee, which would require another surgery. Needless to say, after going through all the pain, current ongoing physiotherapy and exercise regime in order to be able to walk with one crutch, Louis is concerned that any surgery would put him back to the state where he was after the knee surgery.

It has been a rather long, arduous, slow and somewhat draining period for him since late December last year. There's a lot of hard work that he needs to put in consistently just to yield a modicum of progress. I guess he's got a lot of self-inflicted pressure to recover as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for the case of a knee injury, my personal sense is that a lot of time and patience is required, especially with the extent of injury he had sustained.

For the last 2 days, the fever and his swollen knee had pretty much zapped him of his energy that he had to rely on using 2 crutches to get around. Thankfully after the start of the antibiotics course, he's now back to using one crutch.

We'll be seeing the doctor again next week for a review. Keeping our fingers crossed that everything will be alright from now on.

Faith turns 2

We celebrated Faith's birthday with the extended family on Saturday. There's more to celebrate other than the fact that she turns all of 2 years old.

I have successfully breastfed her for 2 years and would still continue with it until a time where either she or myself decides not to. I still recall how I was so tempted to give up on breastfeeding during the first couple of weeks after she was born due to the difficulties and challenges. I'm glad I persevered. Even now, there's still some people who feel that I should have stopped breastfeeding her long ago, but I try to tell myself (and sometimes tell them too) its becos they do not know the benefits of extended breastfeeding.

Her daddy is progressively improving slowly but steadily by the day. He walks around the house without any crutches, but when he goes out, he still continues to use one -- partly for support and also for those just-in-case moments when its crowded or he's tired.

The only little glitch was that he was having a fever on the day that we celebrated her birthday. A fever that came on on Thur and did not abate even with medication until Sunday. However, nothing was going to keep him away from helping his girl celebrate yet another milestone.

We decided to hold a simple affair at home with the food catered in. Our little extravagance was a 2-tier birthday cake with a Sesame Street theme from Pine Gardens, featuring some of her favourite characters like Elmo, Bert, Ernie and Cookie Monster. The top tier was a black forest cake targeted at the kids (though its not quite a kid's treat given that the cherries were liberally laced with kirsch) and the bottom tier was lychee martini to satisfy the adults.

She had gotten a little bicycle (the ones with a handle at the back for the adults to push) from her grandparents, a Leapfrog Phonics Fridge Magnet from the ACE family, 2 sets of Barbie doll from the grand-aunts and grand-uncles and a Playdoh set from us. Apart from that, Eileen had also given her another Little Miss Sunshine soft toy on Monday to add to her mini Little Miss collection, as well as an Elmo hand-puppet. Given the amount of toys she received, we wisely decided to hold back from opening our present to her and one of the Barbie doll sets.

This year, she was all smiles when everybody sang her her birthday song. Louis had been prepping her for it by singing it to her the few days leading to Saturday. This year, she knew to blow the candles all by herself.

Faith's Dua Peh was filled with pride when she finally acquiesced to allowing him to carry her just before her birthday song was sung. He was absolutely reluctant to give up his perch on the chair with her even though Faith's Dua Erm was shooing him away so that the little family could take a family picture :)

She loved all her presents and she had great fun. We know so becos she said to us while we were turning in for bed, "FUN!" We knew she was referring to the celebration that evening. Even though Faith's not speaking full sentences yet, we absolutely know what she means :)

On Monday, which was her actual birthday, my mom brought a vegetarian fruit cake. We put a symbolic candle on it, sang her another birthday song and let her blow the candle again. She seemed rather thrilled to have us sing her so many birthday songs.

Certainly, our lifestyles have changed drastically since Faith was born. Yet, she's given us so much joy, pride and have taught us so many valuable lessons in life that we just cannot imagine what we would do without her. Like every proud parent, we think our little girl is the best in the world. Or as a friend and I used to say jokingly, "The Bestest"!

Happy Birthday, Little One!

Family dinner and last day of JG semester

Another fulfilling and happy week...:)

1) Faith's JG Mandarin Playclub's 1st semester party

2) Family dinner at Hua Ting

Faith's classes

Two weeks of silence without any post. I'm just plain lazy and procrastinating about putting up a post -- lying in bed with a book feels great most nights. There's quite a bit of stuff about Faith that has happened for the last few weeks, mostly about how much she has grown and her classes.

In about 12 days time, she would officially turn 2 years old. Louis and I still can't believe how fast it has been. Truthfully, the first quarter of her life seemed to crawl by, becoming slightly more interesting when she turned 6 months onwards. The fun really begins around the time she reached 1 year old. That's when time seems to fly, especially when we ramped up the number of classes she attended.

On her classes, there's absolutely no regrets about putting her back into Kindermusik. Every week after class, she happily tells me, "fun", meaning she's had fun and enjoyed her class. Its great that she has a friend to look forward to seeing in class too; Lecia, who's younger than her by about 3 months or so, previously from the same JG Playnest class.

Maybe I'm biased becos I know many kids enjoy music, dancing and singing. However, I felt that for Faith, she's shown much more than the usual interest that other kids display. And becos of her interest in song and dance, its also our strategy to use that to interest her in Mandarin classes.

Its a shame that Louis and I don't speak much Mandarin to her at home. I'm terrible at it and Louis, well... it just doesn't come naturally for us. Following her JG Mandarin classes, I do make an effort to try to speak Mandarin to her. Again, its not automatic, more like we sometimes translate certain words from English to Mandarin, or one or two sentences here and there, whenever we remember.

If anything gets her juice going, its singing and dancing. So, we decided to play children's songs in Mandarin in the car instead of English. Obviously, I'm equally clueless and can't read what are the titles of the songs on the CDs.

Thankfully, its friends to the rescue. Eileen helped me to source and obtained some Mandarin nursery songs and VCDs in Mandarin. So far, we've played one of the music CD in the car and she's kind of enjoying it, learning to sing in bits and pieces for some songs.

Just today, I've finally caved in and bought the from JG the Mandarin CD comprising of songs that they sing in class. Its ridiculously expensive at $19.20 for a CD of just 30 short songs. But its got songs that they sing all the time in class. I figured that the more familiar she is with the songs, the more enjoyable and interest she would show in her classes.

A few incidences had gotten me worried. Perhaps, I'm not being fair becos of the circumstances that preceded her going to class. Nonetheless, its gotten both Louis and I worried enough that we figured we needed to do more to pique her interest in the language and not to let both our own misgivings about Mandarin when we were younger taint her interest in the subject.

We've been regularly going to Safra in the morning, twice a week. Louis would go to the gym while I head to the pool with Faith. As the only service elevator is located nearer to the front entrance of the club, I would usually let Louis off at the front porch, then turn around and park the car before we head to the pool.

Couple of weeks ago, Louis decided to up his visits to the gym, especially after he's been given the go-ahead by his doctor to start bearing as much weight as he could on his recovering knee. To work around Faith's classes, we decided to drop Louis off at the club before I bring Faith for her Mandarin classes on Wednesdays and Fridays. As that's about the time for Faith's afternoon nap, she usually falls asleep in the car after Louis alights.

Lo and behold, when she wakes up from her nap and realises that she's at the JG carpark, she started crying. When I asked her if she's crying becos she doesn't want to go to class, she said "Yes!". Initially, I thought she didn't like the class, but as it happened a few times and we noticed its usually becos I drop Louis off, we figured that she might have thought we were doing the morning drop-daddy-off-and-we-go-for-a-swim routine. Between swimming and Mandarin class, its very clear which is her preference.

The incidence has gotten Louis and myself to start asking ourselves the question, what if she really, truly hates Mandarin? Unfortunately, even if she really hates it, we would still continue to send her for classes becos we are fearful that with the limited exposure to Mandarin she has at home, she might hate it as much as we did in our youth when she finally has to learn it formally in school.

I was talking to a Caucasian mom in Faith's Little Gym class and she was telling me about how she's ensuring that both her kids are being sent for Mandarin classes, despite the fact that her elder son hates it. Thankfully, her daughter, who is Faith's age, enjoys the class.

She's an American who's been in Singapore for the last 8 years and she said to me that she wants her kids to learn a 2nd language and hopes that someday, they would thank her for it. It drives home the point that by Faith's time, it wouldn't be enough for her to command the bad level of Mandarin that we speak and be able to get by, especially not at the rate that China's fast becoming an important player in the global economy. Not when even the non-Chinese are trying to learn Mandarin.

Like it or not, Mandarin classes are not gym or music classes that we would stop if she isn't enjoying herself in class. As parents, it falls on us to make the subject more palatable and interesting to her. So, I'm hoping that music and reading to her would be a good start.

On that same thread, I am regrettably stopping her Little Gym classes and Faith had her final lesson yesterday. We didn't stop it becos she didn't enjoy it. However, her crying incidences at JG's carpark, as well as my reading of the book "Einstein never used flashcards" has made me even more conscious not to subscribe to the Kiasu-parent syndrome and to ensure she has enough time for unstructured play.

Of the three different classes she attends, Little Gym was the most expandable of the lot. With 3 lessons per week, I'm striving to have more free time to bring her to the park, arrange play-dates with other kids or just let her potter around at home doing whatever she likes.

As I'm writing this, I realised that I've not even started about the changes in Faith, e.g. her vocabulary and speech, her antics, behaviour and how she's systematically destroying our once spick-and-span house. I think I'll save that for another day, seeing that my post has winded up being a long one. Not unusual :)

Here's a photo of her taken about one and a half weeks ago. That was the day when I met up with Eileen to pass her some Mr Men books and she in turn gave me the Mandarin CDs/VCDs, Mr Men water bottle and Mr Men t-shirts that she had bought for Faith. Rachel and Faith are both crazy about Mr Men now. She insists on bringing her 3 Mr Men soft-toys to bed nightly and for me to read one of the 46 Mr Men book titles she now own to read to her.

I just couldn't resist having a picture of her posing with all her Mr Men paraphernalia.