indi + rani = noe | kei

Finally after about 6 months, Kei's birth video is done into a 5 minutes short clip. See here:

Gosh, such a bad mommy I am, I haven't written anything on Kei ever since he was born! True enough, parents dedicate a lot of resources to keep the memory of the first kid, but the resources are dwindling for the second kid and beyond. As I am the fourth kid, I really understand this, because I couldn't find any pictures or mementos related to my infancy and childhood. Sorry I digress. But with the hectic schedule of taking care two kids, I just realized that Kei didn't have as many mementos as Noe had. C'mon, I gotta be fair to both of my kids. So, now I write something about Kei's progress during the past four months.

So far, the only thing that I have written is how breastfeeding Kei has been smooth sailing. Now I will try to add more news.

Now that Noe is having full day activities at Carpe Diem, we noticed that they have already taught him basic alphabet recognition. Sometimes he would point at similar letters that appear in public domain and say "Same... same" (referring to the letters "N" that appear at different places).

What's next? Is he going to learn how to read at age 3? Is he going to start writing at age 4?

I am pissed off by whoever did the paving along Labrador Park using limestone (or whatever material) that becomes slippery when wet. It was raining so I slipped and sprained my ankle this afternoon. I landed from my fall the wrong way because I was trying to protect my baby who is sitting in my baby bjorn carrier. And now I can only walk with turtle pace, and my ankle hurts, it is a bit swollen too. ARRGH!

I think the sayings "What gets measured, gets managed" is quite true....

Tracking our expenses and transactions

We have been quite rigorous in tracking our expenses and transactions since the first years of our marriage. We log our expenses up to the cents.

I'm back into the real world after two days being confined and pampered in the hospital ;> Now Kei is one week old. Anyway my handsome and caring husband has written the summary of the birth process in the previous entry, and I'll try to write down more details of the birthing experience before I forgot, so here goes. This story will come in several parts: the preparation, the birth story itself, and some afterthoughts. These stories are personal story of mine, and I share it here for my family and friends. And it's gonna be long because I want to dump as much details as possible that I can remember.

Technical (Medical) Preparation

Last week we took Noe to tennis court for the first time and we let him use a junior racquet there. He seemed to enjoy chasing and hitting the balls at the clay courts very much. Maybe because he'd been watching Rafael Nadal (the clay court king) too many times :)

A few days later Indi bought a used-junior Prince racquet for Noe at Cash Converter for only 8 dollars. When we brought it home, Noe got hooked up to it and took a home-lesson with Uncle Yodhi almost immediately.

We've returned to Singapore and now struggling with deadlines and work. We'll put down the stories of our Indonesia trip one by one, once we have time to write it down. And let this writing be the last rants about our last trip. I'd like to emphasize that our trip has been really pleasant and fun, but we just want to put down some of the negative experiences that we had before going on talking about the good stuff. This last rant will be about several things, first, can we trust Indonesian doctors? And second, about the living cost in Indonesia. I promise, this will be our last rant from our last trip! Next time, we'll write about the great, fabulous, orgasmic food we tasted in Surabaya!

1. Can we trust the doctors?

Noe Down with Fever