i swear. the day anton hit his ninth month, he’s been bouncing off the walls. i could never get him anymore to keep still for a photo, even if for just a couple of minutes.
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there. i did it. texted my boss i finally decided to quit. after 10 semesters (five years), i’m not teaching anymore! not this sem, nor the next nor ever. i think. and strangely i don’t know how i feel about it. as soon as i posted my first list, i thought of some more: 1. that you will most likely get (if you have the same number of friends as A and i do and invite them to your baby’s christening) around 6 pairs of shoes all of the same size that realistically, the baby will use for just a couple of months. and of these 6 pairs, your baby will most likely use only 2. (babies really don’t seem to like shoes so much). the lesson of the story is for you to strike shoes off your shopping list for baby’s layette; you will get more than enough as gifts. 2. that babies can survive without pacifiers. i let anton suck his thumb, or sometimes, even his whole hand, and then i don’t make much fuss about it, like by taking his thumb off his mouth, for instance. i let him do whatever makes him happy, and he doesn’t get fixated with it. or i give him a toy to keep his hands busy. i believe babies without pacifiers learn to self-soothe themselves earlier, and consequently, they’re more emotionally intelligent. 3. A and i believe in co-sleeping with the baby. we co-slept with anton for two months. after that, he preferred the crib. he would motion by rolling his head to the direction of the crib when he’s breastfeeding at night. or in the daytime, when i’m holding him up in a standing position on my lap, he will drop his head to the side, to indicate he wants to rest in his bassinet on the playpen. he started doing this quite early; prior to that he only slept in his crib for naps. what’s important is for you to learn to read your baby’s body language from day 1. babies incredibly know what they want at an early age and they figure out ways to tell. so if you notice him doing a movement repeatedly enough, you can be sure he’s trying to tell you something. 4. that babies do have a secret language. babies will first learn to say ah-goo. i got this from " what to expect during the first year" and it’s true! the book was printed in the US and it was true with my baby, even if we are not an english-speaking household (we’re more tagalog, ilocano and kapampangan). so it must be true with babies all over the world. and before they learn to speak, they will have a stock of syllables they will utter, and it will change week after week. it makes sense; as if they’re practicing the basic sounds they will need later to put together to utter words, regardless of language. and you don’t even have to buy books to decipher baby’s language; it’s all logical, you only need to listen closely because the baby will tend to associate an utterance with some need or some complaint. 5. babies thrive in affirmation. everybody in the house claps and cheers at anything anton does. people tell me what a happy baby anton is. i think our family’s constant affirmation is to thank for that. anton hardly cries, unless he’s really hungry or uncomfortable. he is rarely cross, and if you talk to him and look him in the eyes to explain, for instance, that he will have to wait just a bit, he will wait. 6. babies love conversation. we talk to anton all the time. even yaya talks with him, not down to him. he will be a very talkative child, i think. he seems elated when we pretend to understand all his babblings. sometimes, i think we even really understand his babblings. 7. babies love to play with real stuff, not baby stuff. anton likes remote controls, cell phones, pillows, plastic cups and other household items. to him, these are toys. so i just give them a vigorous wipe-down with alcohol if i can’t wash them. luckily, anton doesn’t put things in his mouth much anymore. but i still have to take care his hands are clean when he puts them to his mouth after playing. 8. bottles of alcohol are handy to have in every room of the house, when you have a baby in the house. 9. babies will constantly test your limits. it’s always gonna be a never-ending struggle between him getting his way and you giving up. a firm "no" and a serious look works for me somewhat, though sometimes i am tempted to laugh out loud because he looks funny when his face scrunches up when he’s being reprimanded. 10. watching baby is not much different from teaching–motivating and stimulating–18-year-old college kids; in fact, i think that it was probably my best preparation for motherhood. 1. that pampers is the best and most reasonably-priced disposable diaper (i don’t like the adhesives on huggies–pampers’ are refastenable and easier to take off without startling baby, especially when he’s sleeping). and for nighttime, pampers all-nights saves you money and trouble once baby learns to sleep though the night. but for the first month, expect baby to go through at least 4 diapers through the night for weewees and runny poopies, so don’t use the all-nights yet. rest assured that baby’s erratic and frequent bowel movement eventually will settle and go down to twice a day–during the day, as early as the second month. 2. that avent bottles (and silicone nipples) are virtually indestructible. they’re anti-colic and well worth the almost php 400 price tag per 4 oz bottles. you will only need 3, by the way. and if you like, another for water and juice, once baby is 6 months old. a cheaper brand will do because soon baby will shift into sippy cups. up to now, anton doesn’t mind we still use 4 oz bottles for his milk. anton has both avent and pigeon bottles, and he likes the avent bottles better. 3. that babies outgrow baby carriers very fast. we have two, a baby bjorn (formerly owned by my nephew) and an evenflo snugli. for some reason anton (and A) seems to like the bjorn better. but the snugli is easier to use, and is as sturdy (and as the name suggests, fits baby snugly). and it’s only USD 20 versus the cheapest bjorns at USD 75. i am skeptical of those hippy slings that they tout to be cheaper and more natural alternative to branded carriers; i constantly worry about properly supporting the baby’s neck and back, as well as the baby’s comfort, especially when the baby’s heavier (you can’t imagine how much babies grow in a week!). 4. that if you’re using disposables on your baby, you don’t have to buy birdseye diapers anymore, but a couple dozens of small gauze diapers will come in handy for spit-ups, and they’re flexible to use as bibs when you run short. (actually, i prefer gauze diapers to bibs.) also, they’re softer for wiping baby’s very delicate skin. made the mistake of buying 2 dozens of quality birdseye; they’ve been sitting uselessly on a shelf of anton’s dresser for 9 months now because i couldn’t find any use for them. 5. that cheerios is the best snack for babies starting to eat solid food. it’s fun and healthy for baby to eat, and it’s fun and healthy for you, too. 6. that babies get bored, too. they need a constant change of scene, because they get tired of staring at the same things over and over. so once the baby gets antsy–especially after you’ve burped him and checked his nappy a million times already–try seeing things from his perspective. your baby is not colicky; chances are he’s just bored out of his wits. so get your bum off the sofa and off the front of your TV set! 7. that it you can afford it, buy one crib for the bedroom and one playpen for the day (most playpens come with a bassinet). needless to say, be prepared to rearrange your furniture to accommodate a playpen in your living room. 8. that breastfeeding is the fastest way to shed the baby pounds. i lost 25 pounds during the first week, and continued to lose 5 more during the second week. i ended up losing more pounds (30 lbs) than i gained during the whole of my pregnancy (25 lbs). 9. that, corollary to no. 8, sadly, you cannot lose the baby pouch merely by breastfeeding. you still have to start doing those crunches after your sixth month to tone up your abs. rest assured, constantly lifting and carrying baby works wonderfully for your arms and shoulder muscles. 10. that motherhood is so incredibly wonderful, and that babies grow up too fast! this is a late reaction, because i kept forgetting to blog about it. it’s so despicable. i condemn the killing of a teacher and a pollwatcher in taysan, batangas. (and as of yesterday, another badly burned pollwatcher succumbs.) i believe the perpetrators of the crime should be meted out no less than the death penalty. * * * have you gotten any forwarded e-mail from this guy who is in denial about the corruption in this country according to this foreign survey? bad news, buddy. corruption IS a reality we have to daily live with in this country. and our country’s not only notoriously known for its corrupt people, it’s also peopled by murderers and vandals. * * * it’s bad enough our corrupt politicians fatten themselves obscenely with their pork barrels that nothing is left of the national budget for the building and maintenance of classrooms. no wonder local and national government positions are hotly fought for. all the contenders’ eyes are on the prize; their greed is so much that a lot of them have to destroy and kill to gain power. the burning down of the school, for me, is enough for anyone to be meted out the death penalty. * * * it is so disturbing that there is a prevalence of moral decay in our society. and it is all rooted in greed. * * * due to a chronically warped value system, our politicians are unapologetic of the dynasties they are creating. they even flaunt it in our faces. consider this long-time mayor of this major city, his wife and his spawn. he rose to prominence as an activist who was designated mayor of this city–the very first appointee of a government which overthrew a dictator. now, two decades later, he is still mayor of that city, and inevitably, with his reelection, his term will even outlive marcos’s 21 years by the time he is finished with it. pero, ang hindi ko talaga ma-take itong mga anak nitong mama na ito. honestly, akala nila sila na lang talaga ang anak ng diyos? it’s so orwellian. in the novel "1984" where the heroes were pigs and the antagonists were humans, the pigs who started out being noble and idealistic (but were slowly corrupted by their rise to power in the course of the story) were indistinguishable from people by the book’s end. it smells like rain, and it is already dark outside even if it is only 3:37 PM per my computer’s clock. as i blog, the room becomes darker as the drizzle turns to rain and, rather than turn on the lights, I open the door of the study to let some light in from the terrace. i love the smell of rain, and I must have already blogged a million times about it. now with the smell of rain, inevitably i am craving for the musty smell of the grade school library—the smell of the old hardbound books of my childhood—those dog-eared and well-worn titles I used to take home: the detective books of nancy drew and judy bolton, the unabridged but illustrated childrens’ classics, the enid blyton books about english kids who lived in boarding schools with names like malory towers and st. clare’s, the little house on the prairie series, the anne of Avonlea series, and my favorite, books by roald dahl. i feel like an 8-year-old again. am fighting the urge right now to look for that nancy drew i bought (out of a compulsion to recreate the library of my childhood) some years ago and curl up in my bed to read. yesterday was A’s birthday. was quite surprised when he told me last week that he had been allowed to take my poor A. we had planned to go to binondo, to president’s tea house, then do some so before leaving, A had to finish a story. i had known something like and then it started again. the various editorial assistants and editors kept we were able to make it–but it took us forever–to get to binondo. because yaya wasn’t with us, A and i took turns eating and minding baby (he anyway, on the way to the mall (we decided to go to mega mall so A can work so as A pounded away the keys on a rented computer, anton and i killed time we pretended, at least for some three hours, that we didn’t exist to and so my arms are aching till now. and all we have to show for a whole it goes without saying that everybody was so exhausted.
i almost didn’t exercise my right to vote yesterday. A just convinced me. i thought i’d already lost my faith in the electoral process in this country. * * * our family voted in our old neighborhood in cubao, at the ramon magsaysay high school. though we haven’t lived there for fifteen years, we’re not registered elsewhere, so we think it’s ok. the neighborhood is unchanged, but the houses are more run-down than the last time i was there–in 2004. i keep forgetting how many years i’ve been away. it still always surprises me how much time had wrought damage to the place. and the end of the street where we used to live is so densely populated, not to mention very polluted now. i cannot imagine living there anymore. * * * there were the old familiar faces milling about in the polling place. funny how easily you can still pick them from the crowd despite the years, the added pounds, wrinkles and grey hair. i think you recognize somebody by the eyes. * * * yaya took a leave to go home to batangas to vote so we had no choice but take anton to the polling place with us. i cast my vote with him sleeping soundly in my arms, unmindful of the noise, the heat. his brow was relaxed and not knitted like when he is awake; his eyelashes gently rested on his flushed cheeks (like butterflies, i remember from a poem). what compelled me to exercise my right to vote was my responsibility to anton. how many times i’ve heard it said that we get the government we deserve by the way we vote, and i say now that we get the government we deserve by the way we frivolously waste our right to vote. hopefully someday anton will appreciate the choices i am making for him now. * * * my dad and i have our differences in many things, especially in political opinions. our discussions always inevitably end up in bitter arguments. he hates politicians from UP, which is funny because he allowed three of his kids to study in UP. he thinks UP grads are obnoxious. when my sister and i were younger, we always got an earful from daddy whenever we argued because we were from UP and he thought us little rebels. (the youngest of us three UP grads was luckily spared.) now my sister and i are better at parrying shots from daddy by merely ignoring them. my wish is that anton will know that A and i will respect his beliefs no matter what, that we will never be judgmental and overbearing, and that he can always discuss with us. * * * i will respect anton’s opinions, no matter how different they will be from mine. and i hope someday he will respect my opinions, too. * * * after voting i actually felt good. like it was a catharsis of some kind. as the initial election results come in this morning, i am optimistic again for the outcome of this election. at least for my baby’s sake. i just do hope nanette castelo daza doesn’t get another term as congresswoman. (R) daddy back when he was a baby. (L) baby at approximately daddy’s age. |
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