So what does it really feel like, when you wake up in the morning and you find your baby smiling at you, in the cot?

You know when you stuff your face silly with pizza, KFC, icecream, chocolate and god knows what else before going to bed, and wake up the next morning very mysteriously weighing 1 kg less than you did the day before? That moment of pure disbelief, giddiness, and degenerate happiness as you stare at the number on the scale? In terms of intensity it is more or less the same.

I don’t know what it is like for guys!

I tried the whole ‘write to your baby when you are pregnant’ thing and that didn’t work out so swell. Am just not the ‘connected with the little one’ type. To tell you the truth I missed all the antenatal classes and I don’t have cute prints of your feet either. Koreans have a big 100-day bash thingum but that I also kinda skipped. I am afraid your first birthday may also end up being a muted affair of M&S Dine in for £10.  I’ll get an extra jar of mango delights for you though.

This is why I am rather happy you are a boy. I am assuming you won’t mind too much, and if you do, I will be able to distract you with a t0y that makes bleeping noises, waaay after your thirtieth birthday.

But that is only because birthdays don’t really mean much when you are little. However, for your information (perhaps you are considering reproducing etc) I thought I’d give you a quick sixth month appraisal.

You are a generally good baby. You started sleeping through the night – not the miserly 5 hour stretch that is the standard definition – but actually from 9-7, from month three. Having said that, *I* was a good baby, so I should thank myself.

You get comments such as “Wow, he *really* looks like a boy!” from people who are greatly relieved to know that you are a boy ; it is mainly your 96th percentile bulk, disturbingly wide shoulders, and an extra-wide ribcage construction. You are at least average-cute in terms of looks (your mother is trying to be objective here). You look better with a headgear. I hope this trend reverses in the future, as I don’t think I generally get along well with boys with headgears.

You refuse to roll over. I think it’s your protruding ribcage that hurts you during tummy time. Or perhaps you are just lazy. You *finally* rolled over today (the back-to-front one. The tummy-to-back one you did for a whole day after month 3, then lost interest). Your grandparents were greatly concerned about your cynicism regarding this rolling over manoeuvre. As soon as you rolled over I alerted your first shift granny. You made her cry.

The thing that interests you the most at this moment is food. We experimented a few times and reached the conclusion that yes, you are interested in your parents and all, but when they are eating, you are only interested in the food. You eat like a monster. On average you drink 35oz of milk and three full meals. Usually one jar of baby food is not enough. I hope you appreciate the capital investment. <== main point of this posting.

I also think you are optimistic, or gullible. I give you food and you eat it. You make a face. I give you some more of the same food and you still open your mouth. You will do this up to ten times before eventually giving up, as if realizing that I am *really* not going to give you a nice meal. Your father and I had a long discussion about this; does this mean that you are an optimistic baby who’ll not give up on things easily, or will you be a gullible baby that gets conned by multi-level marketing people year after year?

So, a short summary:

Things you like – granny, daddy, mommy, food, Cow & Gate milk, yellow ducky, teething ring, nappy change, bathing, being picked up, CBeebies, watching people eat, banging on (any) keyboard, drowning electronics in your spit.

Things you don’t like – mommy playing rough, itchy head, dressing, mommy snapping nappy fastener off that’s stuck on your tummy, hard poo, all forms of sleepiness, UK Top 40 hits program, people being stingy with electronics that you can chew, daddy’s demonic laughter, people who eat but don’t give you food, Aptamil milk, and Sophie the teething Giraffe.

Things you are ambivalent about – the sleeping bag, the baby shampoo, the birdie in the garden, BBC News, mommy trying to be funny, mommy trying to dance, mommy scratching your head, mommy kissing you excessively, garlic bulb, and your toes.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. Hope it helps.

Mommy.

The thing about childcare is that everyone seems to have a different story/opinions. Some people say that their babies smiled from day one. Some say their kids only smiled in month five. The child not smiling could or could not be a sign of autism. The child not making eye contact is or is not a problem. Some say wait. Some say keep an eye on it and make sure to seek early treatment. Aaaargh. What to do what to do.

Every person has a paranoia about something. I have one concerning autism, seeing that my social ineptness borders on Asperger’s. So Panda not smiling was a very big paranoia item.

After vigorous aggregation of data on autism, I reached the conclusion that:
90% chance that autism is overdiagnosed.
90% chance he will sort himself out.
99% chance I will be devastated if he is autistic.

But hey, it can’t hurt to ask a doctor. Hub and I left home yesterday for a 9:40 appointment.

Then, in the doctor’s office, as I was holding him, Panda started smiling attacks. He looked at me, then smiled. It was faint and I wasn’t sure it was a smile. Then he smiled again. Oh no. Insufferable cuteness. He looked at me, then smiled again. Oh no, you bastard. I am turning into liquid. But he didn’t stop there. Eight smiles later, it was his turn to see the doctor. He wasn’t smiling but now he seems fine, I said.

So there. Panda smiled, and I was so happy I didn’t know what to do with myself. Urgh. Manipulation, I tell you. Evil babies evolved this superpower to control their parents. They can cry all night long, then look at you and smile at you and you can do it all over again the next night. Dammit.

I am afraid of what is going to happen when he starts laughing, then talking.

But AN AX-MURDERER???

Ok, so he is not *that* close to my family. And mom probably thought I am old enough to handle it (or she didn’t know I’d tell everybody on my blog :p)

So, here goes.

My grandfather was the first of seven children and he had three sisters. They were all uneducated. Two of his sisters eventually became the Designated Village Spiritual Persons (fortune-telling, exorcism, talking to the dead, and otherwise just being generally mysterious and what not) and consequently had horrible lives. (It is believed that the ‘mediums’ cannot lead happy lives. Mom thinks it is because they worship the wrong spirits, not the Right God. But anyway.) The two sisters both had many children, and the axe murderer was the fifth child of the younger sister. So he was my mom’s cousin. Let’s call him Ronnie.

He was a bit wonky from childhood, mom said. He’d get scares very easily and have epileptic attacks. She also mentioned that his pooh was bluish in colour when he was a baby. Don’t know what that means. Anyway, when he got older, his mom found a wife for him. According to my mom, she was a very nice girl from a dirt-poor family. By that time Ronnie already had psychotic episodes. He also had a fascination with knives and always carried one around, threatening to stab anyone who displeased him. Listening to her, it seems that he suffered from a form of schizophrenia, but mom firmly believes that was taken by evil spirits. Korean shamans talk about ‘the spirits descending’. To become a really good fortune-teller, a powerful spirit must possess your body. You will be sick – shivering and sweating for days – then when you surrender, your eyes will open to see spirits and the dead. So he became one of those fortune tellers and was making money doing readings.

However, his wife was greatly suffering as his violent outbursts became worse day by day. My granny felt very sorry for the girl and offered her a way out – my first aunt was married and settled in Seoul and was looking for a maid. She could just take the bus ticket from my granny and go to Seoul. My aunt would be at the bus terminal to pick her up. She will then have a place to stay and also make money.

The girl was very tempted, but when she was about to board the bus, she decided that it is not right for a woman to ditch her husband and turned back.

A couple of weeks later, my granny heard someone calling her from outside. It was a night of a full moon. She opened the door a little and saw Ronnie standing outside. “What is it, dear?” she asked. He came up to my granny. His eyes were not right. Granny got scared. After staring at granny for a while, he took out a knife. Pointing the knife at granny, he smiled. With the full moon shining on the blade and on his teeth, he looked like the devil straight out of a storybook. Granny collapsed on the spot. He then told my granny: I know what you are trying to do. I will kill you! You try that again and I kill you! You say anything to me one more time and I will kill you!

Then he left. Granny apparently wet her pants.

A week later, granny was on her way home when she felt a strong desire to go see her sister-in-law (Ronnie’s mom). Not knowing why, she went to her house. (This part I don’t really understand – if she were really scared of Ronnie, why would she go see his mother?) There was no one in the house. She was about to leave when she heard a sound coming from the stable. The door was left open. She went in. There was thick liquid flowing from the manger. Her eyes followed the path of the dark liquid and found the source of the blood: Ronnie’s wife was lying inside the manger, with an axe half buried in her head. Granny wet her pants again. She couldn’t scream.

She somehow made it out of the stable and regained enough strength to run to the neighbours. Ronnie was arrested very shortly afterwards. It was very big news and he was sentenced to a life in a mental hospital. Mom says he is still alive but no one talks about him.

So there. I have an axe murderer in my family.

1) Panda takes his food very seriously. See how he grabs the bottle, then drinks with his hands neatly folded. Very polite table manners.

2) Panda’s lethargic moments. There’s the ‘mysterious smile’ as well:

3) Kungfu Panda!

But it didn’t happen like that to me. In fact, having a child made me feel more isolated and lonely in a way. I am not a very lonely/morose/sentimental person, so when I say I feel more isolated and lonely, I mean exactly that. I realized how humans cannot share emotions in a true sense. That makes all of us very alone, and that’s sad.

I spend the most of the day with my mom. I hold my son in my arms, and I know that she did the same to me thirty years ago. Mom says babies do this and babies do that, and I know that she means me. But you see, I don’t remember! The first ten years are only a badly mangled snippets of information here and there. She may have had post partum depression. Maybe she was just a radiant new mom. Whichever way, I know she spent an awful lot of time with me.

But I don’t remember.

When you spend time with someone and share memories, you build a relationship with that person. In that case, for all intents and purposes, my mom’s ten years were spent with an amnesiac. *She* knows. *She* looked at her baby (i.e. me), held the baby, laughed with the baby, wondered about life’s meanings, got frustrated with a child being obstinate etc etc. Still, I DON’T REMEMBER. As far as I am concerned, my relationship with my mother is entirely built on memories from perhaps about the age of ten. Although I get on fine with her, it is not what she feels towards me.

This makes me rather sad. I know that my son will feel more or less the same way about me when he is older. When *I* look at him, I will remember his cute face, his big round eyes, and chubby legs. He won’t. He won’t know what I told him, what I sang to him (which may not be a bad thing, come to think of it), and how I felt about him. He may rationally understand it, as I rationally understand what mom must have gone though, but he won’t *know*, the way you know something that is a part of your memory or yourself.

As I said before, this saddened me somewhat. Then I thought… Norman Vincent Pearle. Kidding. Well, positive thinking is a good thing. Every time I kiss his round cheeks, I tell myself that this memory is for myself. I don’t get to share it, but I do get to keep it for myself. That’s good enough. He will probably never love me as much as I love him (again, I know this because this is true of my mom and myself) but I’ll have to stick with the sentimentalists and say that having chance to love is better than not giving any, afraid of not getting it back.

(you:…awwww  me: Thank you, thank you.)

Panda: if you ever get to read this, be nice to your mom.

I’m doing a masters in software engineering part-time. That’s mostly why my mom is here for six months. While I am on my maternity leave, I thought I’d do as much studying as possible. This week was the first module after giving birth. It was my third module and I still have seven more to go.

So the days went like this – I wake up around six. I express, dress, feed self, pack lots of things and head off to the station. I take the 7:05 train to Slough, then change to Oxford. I get there around 8:20. 20 minute walk and I am in class. I express again. Thereafter it is class, express, lunch, class, express, class. At 5 I head home and get there around seven at night. Store expressed breast milk, wash expressing gear, express again, have dinner with family, look after Panda for a while, shower, express, finish up translation (took on two translation jobs this week – stupidity) and it is about eleven. I go to bed. Wake up at three to express (are you getting tired of this ‘express’ thing yet? I know I am tired). Wait a bit till Panda wakes up. Feed him, burp him, put up with his tantrums, then go back to sleep. Wake up at six.

This is a good night’s scenario. A lot of times he wakes up at one and five. Then my night’s sleep is just screwed.

It was Wednesday. I went to bed at twelve because Panda only fed at eleven or so. See, if he started feeding at eleven, it takes about 15 minutes. Burp, throw up, clean up, clean the bottles, settle him etc and it is 11:45. Going to bed at 12 is pretty good. I woke up again at 3. By the time I could lie down again it was 4:00. He was having a particularly bad night and it started crying at 4:30.

There I was, standing in the living room at 4:30. I know I will be screwed for the day. It will be a bit better if I slept another hour and a half. But husband only went to bed at 3, after feeding him. My mom’s been looking after him the whole day. But I also need to sleep. Panda keeps on crying. I pick him up. He calms down a bit after five minutes. I put him in his cot. From experience I can tell that he won’t be sleeping for long.

I take a deep breath, and open mom’s door a bit wider. I feel shit. Yes, I was hoping that mom would wake up and get to him at 5, or whenever it is that he wakes up before six.

I get up at six when the alarm goes off. Mom’s been in the living room since 5:20. I feel shit again.

*

On Friday when class finished, I started feeling fluey. Great timing. I get home. Mom’s tired, husband is also tired beyond belief. It’s been a rough week for everyone. But I’m sick, you see. I pick up Panda who is all cuteness after throwing hours of tantrums. Mom asks me if I am feeling alright. I think about it for a sec and tell her I am not doing too well. She says I should rest. I know that she’s been cleaning, cooking, looking after Panda the whole day. I say I am fine and feed panda and try to settle him. He doesn’t settle. I’m literally sick and tired. Mom says again that I should go sleep. Feeling supremely inadequate, I give Panda to mom. I stand aimlessly for a while, then go to my room and close the door behind me. I hear Panda whimpering on the other side of the door. I lie down and sleep.

Sorry Panda. Mommy’s very tired. I’ll feel better tomorrow.

*

I wonder how others do it, I mean working and looking after kids, *without* granny/husband/whoever else is helping. Maybe they all have angelic babies, but Panda is really not the worst. He’s got good days and bad days (according to the Baby Whisperer book, he’s a ‘textbook baby’.

Well, the ‘feeling shit’ week is hopefully over. Will be a better mom this week.

My mom does not know William Blake, or Agatha Christie for that matter, but this is pretty much what she said about her half-sister.

To re-cap, let me tell you about how this story came about.

My grandfather, married to the college-educated daughter of his old boss, had enough of his wife’s condescension about ten years into the marriage. By that time he was a very prosperous merchant and had time and money to spare. He started to frequent an old Korean version of a gentlemen’s club – a local pub run by the village harlot.

A year later, the ‘madam’ (as they used to be called) gave birth to a girl. If she were a boy, things may have turned out differently, as my grandfather had been waiting for a son for a long time. He had one son, then five girls. The madam’s daughter was the same age as the fourth daughter. Not exactly a welcome addition.

The madam had no interest in bringing up a daughter and when she realized that my grandfather had no long-term intentions for her or her daughter, she dumped the baby at his doorstep. She probably thought since he had enough money, he can deal with the baby. My grandfather took her in.

My grandmother was understandably furious. Knowing that your husband fooled around is one thing, but bringing the illegitimate girl home is quite another. After all, it was rather commonplace for Korean males in those days to fool around, and she knew that she’d been very harsh and cold towards him since the first day they met. But bring a ‘dirty’ child into her home? Unthinkable. What affront.

Terrible fights ensued. Grandfather eventually gave up. I am not sure where the baby went, but I assume he gave the baby back to her mother and paid maintenance.

Ten years or so later, the half-sister came back into the Lee household. Again, I am not sure why she came back in. I suspect her mother could have skipped town with a new suitor. Whatever the reason, this time my grandfather had to take her in. So she joined his pack of five daughters in the small room that the sisters shared.

Mom says they were extremely mean to her. Five Lee sisters joined forces to form a formidable bullying machine. They’d always kick her at night that she’d end up sleeping crouching like a small animal in the corner. Their father would do a quick check before going to bed himself, find the girl shivering in the corner (Korean houses had underfloor heating which was often unevenly distributed. The girl was always pushed to the ‘cold corner’) and throw a fit. During mealtimes, Lee sisters would play chopstick Kung fu to prevent the girl from picking up any food. She ended up just eating rice. Again, my grandfather would see this and scream at the girls to stop being mean. Then the grandmother would lose it and remind him sharply that this situation is entirely his fault, and that he had no leg to stand on.

I don’t know how long she stayed. You see, everyone knew that she was a dirty child in that small village. If her mother were an innocent maiden brought in to produce a son, and if she were a boy, she’d had much more protection. This was not the case. Her mother was the village harlot who left town. Although her father was a well-respected man, she did not have the approval of the rest of the Lee family. Bullied night and day, at home and at school, she couldn’t take it any more. My grandfather decided that she’d be better off away from home.

Her mother did not have any relatives, so grandfather did what was rather common back then. He gave some land to a monastery and told them to take care of the girl. She was about ten years old.

Off she went. She got some informal education but not much. She met a boy in the monastery who was probably there for the same reason – abandoned. Two teenagers feel in love madly and irrevocably. Having committed carnal sins, they were excommunicated (or whatever the correct term is for trainee monks) and came out into the real world.

They did not have any education or skills to survive in the secular world. Out of options to look after his young wife and child, the boy opted to become a fisherman. It was all the rage for a while. You go on a ship for six months and come back home with your wage all saved up. However, six months later the young wife was told that he had been killed. The crew didn’t specify how he died.

The story then jumps ten years. Having had incredibly tough ten years, she was about to give up on life. Then she remembered the mean Lee sisters who never accepted her. The father who created her and then abandoned her. She decided to pay them each a visit and started with the first aunt. My first aunt (who also has a sackful of stories) was extremely well-off by then and living in a palatial mansion in the heart of Seoul. The half-sister knocked on her door, came in, looked around, and left. She then travelled all the way to Busan some 400 kilometers away, and saw my second aunt. She had married a maths teacher and also doing rather well. Then she came to visit us. I don’t remember her though. My father insists that he knew straight away when he saw a strange women in front of his home – Lee sisters all look alike and this was definitely a Lee girl. She then uttered ‘oh, so this one’s doing fine too’ and disappeared. (My dad was quite bitter that my mom didn’t tell her about this immoral part of her family. He believes this would have given him a bit more moral high ground during fights.)

My grandmother heard about this. Although she hated the child thoroughly back when it happened, by then my grandmother was in her sixties and she had mellowed out somewhat. The specifics of their arrangements are not clear but whatever happened, the half-sister didn’t kill herself. She also started seeing my grandparents rather often.

Their initial reconciliation and frequent visits evolved into some kind of a financial scandal and estrangement. During that time she married, lost her second husband, and married again. Now nearing sixty, I believe she’s living with her son somewhere. She’s not doing too well. From what I can tell, she never did well. Just when things start to look good, it seems to go wrong. If there is some sense of justice in life and you get rewarded for your sufferings, she was left out in that scheme. My grandparents tried to help in their old age but it didn’t work out. The Lee sisters felt really bad and tried to help out but it also didn’t work out.

Then again, what do I know? Perhaps her childhood in the monastery was happy. Maybe her first love in the mountains was the most delicious thing ever. Maybe her son made her deliriously happy. I don’t know. All I know is that when mom told me about the half-sister, she looked very sorry, and very sad.