When the hubby first suggested we move in with his parents, I admit I had great reservations.  Firstly, let’s set the record straight - I would have had great reservations moving back in with MY parents had it been my parents in question.

Knowing how capable my MIL is and how determined I was to raise Gavin my way, I was sure I was going to end up bumbling along and feel like a complete idiot in my MIL’s eyes.  Then again, after reading Harvey Karp’s recommendation that more parents break away from the nuclear family style of living and expose their children to the extended family on a regular basis, I thought perhaps moving in with my in laws would not be such a bad thing (especially since my parents are living on another continent). 

There was a reason for Karp’s recommendation, but I won’t go into it in detail in this post.  The gist of it was that nuclear family-living tended to be quite tough on the parents who didn’t have a chance to take a break from parenting.  While extended family living meant that more people should share the responsibility of looking after the children, giving Mum and Dad a chance to take a break and get a little “me” time.

To be fair, it hasn’t been as bad as I had envisaged.  For instance, it is always nice to be able to “drop the kids off at the pool” (read: take a dump, do the no. 2, defecate) in peace without your toddler grabbing onto your knees and wailing because you can’t carry him while you’re on the toilet.  The times when I’ve had to do the latter put a significant amount of strain and pressure on a sphincter that has already been traumatised quite extensively during the episode of childbirth.

Then of course, there are the times when my MIL helps to mind Gavin when I’m having breakfast or when I’m sick and need to rest, or even lately, when I need an hour off to exercise.  These are the times when I’m really grateful to have someone trustworthy to watch over Gavin so that I have peace of mind when I have other things to do.

That said, there are also times when it has been quite trying.  For instance, when Gavin shows a distinct lack of interest in food, it is a cause for alarm for his grandparents.  Let’s face it - in any Chinese family, there’s no such thing as not being interested in eating.  To a Chinese family, food is love, so I guess you could say that a rejection of food is like a rejection of love. 

At other times, there is the unwitting attempts to help which have made things more difficult.  For instance, recently, I was trying to take Gavin to Kizsports so he could have another play at Playland.  At the same time, my MIL was leaving the house to go to the factory.  Because my car was behind hers, she had to wait for me to leave before she could go out. 

Patience isn’t exactly a virtue of my MIL’s so when Gavin decided he was going to be difficult about getting into the carseat, she decided to “help” by suggesting he sit in her car while we reverse the cars.

In case you haven’t spotted the problem with that, let me paint a clearer picture to illustrate:

Gavin sits in grandma’s car without having to sit in a carseat or wear a seatbelt (albeit for the whole of a minute or however long it takes to reverse the cars), and then he has to get back into Mummy’s car where he has to sit in that nasty carseat and put on that restraining belt. 

Now here’s my question:

How likely is it that he is going to cooperate and sit in Mummy’s car?

Yep, you guessed it - not likely at all.

Suffice to say we didn’t go out that day.

Then there was the time (which was honestly not my MIL’s fault as she was really trying to be helpful) when she put Gavin into the car and buckled him in without telling me.  There I was lounging over the newspapers and enjoying my cup of Milo thinking my MIL had taken Gavin for a walk in the garden.

Okay, let me explain again.  When Gavin gets into the carseat, there is a timer that goes off and starts counting down.  If you don’t get into the car and start driving before the timer runs out, Gavin will start going ballistic.  When I realised that Gavin was in the carseat, I had to rush like mad to get going.  It didn’t help that there were two cars behind me that needed to be moved before we could get out. 

In my haste to get out, I also rolled over the chickens’ house because the maid (for reasons unknown to any of us) decided to leave it behind the wheel of my car.  You can imagine my alarm and shock when I ran out of the car to see the box smashed to smithereens and no chickens in sight!  Thankfully the chickens weren’t in the box but that was one very eventful morning!

Living with the extended family obviously has its pros and cons.  While it does have its benefits, I do know it isn’t for everyone.  If do you decide to try it, here is my advice:

Expect to get lots of advice on how things should be done.  Listen with a selective ear and put to practice the advice that makes sense to you.  As for the rest, you can conveniently “forget” about them.  Occasionally, try to humour the grandparents with things that won’t compromise your parenting philosophies.

Disclaimer: I do realise that living with the extended family is different for everyone.  For some it certainly isn’t as easy as I’ve made it sound.  While for others, it can be a breeze.  So take this advice on a case by case basis.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Of late I have been finding it quite disturbing that Gavin seems to show a rather strong attachment to our maid.  Now that fact alone would be little cause for concern if he didn’t prefer the maid over his grandparents. 

I have heard of situations when children prefer the maid purely because the maid has served as their nanny or primary caregiver, however, I have always made sure I provide the role of primary caregiver.  I bathe him, change his diapers, feed him and play with him.  I rarely leave him in the company of the maid unless I have other more pressing matters to attend to and even then I am usually only just in the next room.  As I would expect, my close and constant contact with Gavin cements my bond with him and the only times he has ever rejected me is when he knows I am about to send him to bed or put a stop to his fun.

However, it is not my relationship with Gavin that bothers me of late, but rather Gavin’s affinity for the maid over his family members.  I cringe with the fact that my son has learned to call the maid but remains unable to address his grandparents.  It also bothers me that Gavin would rather be carried by the maid than by his grandfather.

I know that part of Gavin’s affinity for the maid is due to some of the following reasons:

• the maid never tells him off
• the maid accommodates his every whim (which is another reason why I prefer to minimise Gavin’s contact time with the maid less she undoes the discipline we are trying to instill in Gavin)
• the maid takes every opportunity she gets to play with him not because we ask her to but because she wants to (she is truly very fond of Gavin for which I am grateful because I hear too many stories of abusive maids)

Even so, I found it difficult to understand the marked contrast between his eagerness to greet the maid and unwillingness to acknowledge his grandparents. 

And then I discovered that he generally preferred the hired help - not just the ones he knew.  For instance, when he was at my grandparents’ house, he paid rather little attention to my grandparents and my aunt, but was keen to follow their maid around the house.  Likewise, at my uncle’s house, he kept gravitating over to observe her cleaning the house. 

Not only is he more interested in the hire help, but he also seems to willingly allow all these strangers to carry him but refuse whenever one of our relatives wants to carry him.  Now that’s really got my knickers in a knot because he could so easily be kidnapped.

The interesting thing is that it isn’t just Gavin who likes the hired help, but his god sister had also been rather partial towards them.  So what is it about the hired help that draws children to them?  I’m keen to hear any theories that anyone has because it’s certainly got me puzzled.

I’m also running out of ideas on how to get Gavin to show more interest in his grandparents (aside from banning the maid from playing with him which seems a little harsh on the maid who hasn’t really done anything wrong - although I have reduced her contact time with him in hopes of reducing Gavin’s incessant uttering of her name which is clearly annoying my MIL).  Anyone got any suggestions?

Popularity: 5% [?]

It is really amazing how quickly kids pick up new skills…  Sometimes I think we could really learn a trick or two about learning new skills from a child.

My parents recently stopped over on their way to their Japan tour.  When they first arrived, Gavin has just started cruising.  They were gone for the whole of ten days and by the time they got back, Gavin was walking like a pro (well, almost).  I can’t believe how quickly it all happened.

It was the same when he first started to learn how to crawl.  At first, all he could do was rock backwards and forwards.  Just when it seemed like he would never master the ability to crawl, he surprises us all by picking up the skill in a couple of days - or rather, that’s what it seems like to us.

Sometimes I feel really bad that my parents aren’t around to see all the new things Gavin has learned.  In their absence, so much has happened and he’s changing so quickly, you only have to blink and you’ll miss something.  The one thing I’m really grateful for are the international phone cards so at least I can call them and tell them all about his latest milestones. 

Not to mention, now that Gavin’s discovered how wonderful the telephone is, he seems to have plenty to babble to whoever’s on the other line.

Popularity: 9% [?]

They say you only notice things when you have a vested interest in them.  Such was the case with me that when I first got pregnant, I slowly became aware of the number of people around me who were pregnant.  Then when Gavin was born, I started to realise that there were a lot more babies in shopping malls as if there was a sudden boom of babies being born.  I’m sure it wasn’t a sudden boom but more likely that I just hadn’t noticed before.

The other thing I noticed was that some parents had maids who carried the baby stuff and looked after the baby and I remembered thinking to myself that when Gavin was born, I would be the one to look after him and that I would not pan him off to my maid to care for.  The primary reason I chose to be a stay-at-home-Mum was because I couldn’t bear the thought of having my son be closer to the maid rather than to me because he hardly saw me. 

Ironically, despite the fact that I am Gavin’s primary caregiver, followed by my in laws and the hubby, Gavin still seems to prefer the maid to all of us.  Both the hubby and I are completely dumbfounded.  Why does Gavin prefer someone he spends the least time with compared to his grandparents and his even his parents?  The answer is definitely not because he finds her more intriguing since he hardly gets to spend any time with her.  If that were the case, then he would also be demonstrating an eagerness to be around strangers.

There are times when he only wants to be carried by the maid and he’ll reject the rest of us if we try to carry him.  Then there are the times when only the maid can get him to do something we all fail at.  For instance, he used to hate having his face wiped during a meal and would protest to the point of screaming, but when it was the maid who wiped his face, he would sit placidly while she completed the task.  When he refuses to sit in his highchair, the maid will be the only one who can coax him into it.

I thought at first it was because she was the one that always gave in to him while the rest of us were always telling him not to climb, not to play with the power sockets, not to play with the phone or the remote controls, etc.  Since then, I have seen her take things from him that we feel he should not play with and it still has not diminished his preference for her. 

So while some parents give their babies to the maids to carry, mine is carried by the maid not because I choose it but because my son chooses it.  I find this behaviour truly perplexing.

It seems somewhat disturbing that my son prefers the maid to me.  I would have felt better if he had preferred his grandparents.

Popularity: 13% [?]

This is another one of those privileges of being a grandparent that I wrote about in an earlier post.  Anyone who knows me well enough has probably heard me repeating myself like a broken record that the taste for sweetness is a learned response.  Babies don’t crave sweet things until their tastebuds are trained to take it.  Because of this, I have been guarding Gavin’s mouth like a hawk to make sure that nothing goes in that will cultivate unhealthy eating habits becuase I don’t want to have to deal with an infant who will only eat junk food.  Neither do I want to end up like the parents my paedodontic lecturer once told me about when I was studying dentistry back in University. 

My lecturer was not a particularly pleasant man and he would be rather scornful as he recounted how parents would come to him crying over the rotting black stumps for teeth that were in the mouths of their children.  These children would end up having mouthfuls of crowns (if they were lucky) or full dentures (if they weren’t) because the abscesses in their mouths required such drastic treatment.  Because the treatment was so drastic, they would have to go under a general anaesthetic for treatment.  The children who had to have full dentures were because they weren’t old enough for their adult teeth to erupt.

If you think I’m trying to scare you, well, I am.  But the scenario I’ve painted is very real if you don’t take care of your child’s teeth.  A lot of parents have this misconception that baby teeth aren’t important and often don’t see the need to take their children to the dentist.  After all, the teeth are going to fall out eventually and the adult teeth will come into place, right?  Yes, that’s true, to an extent.  Each adult tooth has a designated time when it is ready to erupt into the mouth.  If a baby tooth is lost before the adult tooth is ready, there will be a gap present until the time the adult tooth is scheduled to erupt.  So until the adult tooth is ready, that baby tooth serves as a place holder for that adult tooth.

I digress - this wasn’t supposed to be a lecture about teeth.  It’s a post about ice cream.  So how on earth did Gavin get his first taste of ice cream since I’m so anal about keeping him off the junk food? 

I think it is the grandparents’ want in life to spoil their grandchildren.  This fact is as eternal as the rising sun and no parent can escape it.  Last Sunday, the hubby and I went for dinner with my MIL and FIL.  As usual, I was the last to finish dinner because I would be occupied with feeding Gavin.  And as usual, Gavin would fuss to be out of the chair before I would be done with dinner and his grandparents would kindly take him for a walk while I finished my dinner.  When asked whether they wanted dessert, my MIL and FIL declined. 

After we had paid for the bill, the hubby and I went to look for the three of them and we spotted them huddled outside Baskin Robbins looking highly suspicious.  When they spotted us approaching, I swear they looked as guilty as a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar.  Although my FIL pretended that he was feeding ice cream to my MIL who had her arms full carrying Gavin, both the hubby and I knew better.  Gavin’s tastebuds were no longer innocent to the taste of ice cream.  I guess I can only be grateful that they stuck to plain vanilla ice cream.

Below: Gavin with Ah Mah and Ah Kong during Ah Kong’s birthday.

Popularity: 29% [?]

As most of our friends know, the hubby hates Barney.  And he’ll let our son play with Barney, alright - over his dead body!  So I’m sure the picture above will come as quite a surprise to friends reading this blog.  Yes, that is indeed Gavin you see sitting in a car next to Barney.

“Good grief!  How did that happen?”  I hear you exclaim.

Well, the gentleman in the blue shirt and khaki slacks standing next to Gavin is none other than his grandfather and well, you can’t exactly tell “Ah Kong” (the Hokkien term for paternal grandfather) that you don’t want your son associating with the likes of Barney.  This is  one of the privileges of being a grandparent that I will definitely be looking forward to when Gavin has children.

The other privilege is the right to dispense advice that doesn’t apply to me.  Let me explain further…

When Gavin was a wee lil’ baby, my FIL would lecture us on end that we should never, never allow Gavin to sit on these rides at shopping complexes (like the one you see in the photo).  If we do, he said, we would never hear the end of it the next time we’re in a shopping complex and we happen to pass one of these rides.

So what does “Ah Kong” do the moment Gavin is old enough to sit up by himself?  Yup, “Ah Kong” puts him into one of these rides…

And this was what he had to say by way of explanation to the hubby:

“But Gavin wanted it!”

Sure “Ah Kong”, whatever you say.  Nevermind the fact that Gavin is only nine and half months old…

Popularity: 10% [?]

It is only when you have a child of your own that you discover that you do not know anything about your own parents at all. 

When I first announced to my parents that I was pregnant with Gavin, my mother acted like one cool customer who was hard to impress.  I wasn’t even sure if she was happy or impartial about the arrival of her first grandchild - that was, until she went out and bought Gavin a whole wardrobe of clothes and a box of toys.  Nowadays, her favourite shopping hangout is Toys ‘R’ Us.

To see my mother bouncing, running, bopping and shaking to someone else’s tune is not even a rare sight - it is unseen!  My mother never walks - she saunters, and at a pace so slow, the tortoise would have lost the race.  But when she’s pushing Gavin in the pram, she’s got such a vitality in her pace that my poor Dad can’t keep up with her.  I think even my Dad was flabbergasted by the speed of her power walk!

Below: the picture my Dad managed to take of us walking along the Yarra before Mum left him in her dust - literally.

When we were walking through the toy store, my Dad was like a kid in a candy store wanting to buy everything for Gavin.  Several times my mother told him off, “Don’t be silly! Gavin’s too young to play with that!”

To which Dad replied, “But I can play with it first…”

Gavin’s got his grandparents around his little finger, all right!

Popularity: 9% [?]