A Father’s Diary

Dear Sweetheart,

It’s your birthday, your special day. And I want to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy birthday.

I remember the time when we used to celebrate your birthday before Tabi was born. It used to be just you and I, a romantic dinner, and carefree night.

Things are different now. Much different.

Gone are the days when we could spends hours in each others’ arms, driving and wandering around town, singing our favorite songs, and not worrying about anything else.

Now Tabi is part of everything we do. We have to make her sleep before we sleep at night, keep it quite when she is asleep, make sure she is well fed, dressed up, and clean before we go for an outing, try to rectify the reason she is crying.

Today your life and my life revolves around our child. I am sure it’s more cumbersome for you as she is with you 24×7 and I am there only for few hours a day. But the fact remains that we don’t get any time to sit and talk with peace, share some precious moments, enjoy life.

But that doesn’t mean the importance of your day, your birthday, has decreased any bit. It still matters the most. Even if we don’t celebrate it the same way, even if I don’t get a chance to give you a greeting card, even if you spend the entire night and day of your birthday attending to tabi’s needs, it’s still your birthday.

So let me revive and renew my feelings by saying that I will always love you and you will always be in my heart. No matter how cold and boring our world may become, the warmth of our love will always ignite our lives.

And some day, when there will be no more distractions, we will be together again like we used to be.

I wish you a very happy and joyous birthday, my lovely wife.

With all my love,

A father

Tabi turned one on August 26. We invited some friends over for a small birthday party. Since we have lots of friends and a small apartment, we decided to celebrate the birthday multiple times so that everyone can attend. So on August 26 we invited very close friends. We will do another party in few weeks. Here are the pictures from the birthday party.

This is the cake that my wife baked. It tasted really yummy.

And here is the birthday girl. She loves being around people so she was very happy, even though she had no idea why there were so many people around her.

Here is another pose. She learned to stand up holding on to furniture and stuff ever since she was 9-months old. So she tries to stand whenever and wherever she can. Oh, and the reason she is not wearing any shoes is because they don’t last on her feet more than a few minutes. She is like allergic to shoes. She takes off her shoes and throws them away as soon as we put them on her.

Until now we had a traditional four-wheel stroller that we bought before tabi was born. It was fine for a few months but as she started sitting up the stroller proved to be less attractive and desirable to be used and enjoyed by the little infant girl. As a result we ended up pushing an empty stroller while one of us carried the baby. This was obviously not a fun thing to do as it negated the purpose of having a push cart for the baby.

In the mean time we noticed the strollers by Quinny and were fascinated by the way children enjoyed “riding” it. So we decided to give it a try, hoping our daughter would like the look and feel of the three wheeled stroller and maybe spare us from carrying her everywhere.

But there was one problem. The Quinny was expensive. Way too expensive. So buying a new Quinny was not a possibility. So we started looking for used ones and luckily found one in a good condition and at a great price. We purchased it immediately.

The effect of Quinny on our baby was magical. She “adapted” it with no trouble it all. It was just amazing when we first sat her on the newly purchased stroller and she didn’t complain at all. We couldn’t believe it was happening.

From then on our experience of going out has been totally different. Even when she falls asleep while we are out it is very easy to make her lay down on the quinny and she can continue sleeping peacefully. This was impossible to do in her old stroller and she would always wake up as soon as she was put inside it.

We believe our daughter has an appreciation for expensive and stylish things. It’s going to be fun raising her up.

1. The way she falls asleep on my shoulder while we are out. It’s magical. One moment she is up and next moment is deep asleep.

2. The way she reacts upon seeing me when I come home from work. It’s like she saw her best friend after years.

3. The way she is always calm and peaceful when I am carrying her. When she is with her mom she is all hyper and rebellious (we still don’t know why).

4. The way she likes to go out and meet with total strangers. It’s such a blessing. We never have to worry about how she might behave with new people and it has never been a problem leaving her at friends place for few hours.

5. The way she plays games with us and learns new tricks every day. Who needs a pleo when you have a baby!

Taby is one of those kids who don’t like to sleep. She enjoys the world so much and gets so excited by looking at all the interesting things around here that she doesn’t realize that she also has to get some rest and sleep. So at nights when we are all tired and going to bed, she is wide awake and active, looking forward to more action. Unless she had a very eventful day that made her really tired, she takes a very long time to sleep. She hardly sleeps during the day as well. So in order to make her tired we take her out and let her meet with new people, look at new things, just do something to stimulate her mind and get tired and sleepy. This works out pretty well and she sleeps relatively easily after that. Another thing we have noticed is that she sleeps easily in the car. But on the days when we don’t go out and taby doesn’t do anything to get tired, making her sleep is a difficult task.

We are hoping that as she grows into a toddler and starts walking, this sleeping (or sleeplessness) problem will be solved. She will be stimulating her mind a lot by walking and exploring, resulting in both physical and mental exercise, and as a result fall asleep easily. This is just our guess let’s see what really happens.

Talk about sleeping, the thing I adore the most about taby is when she falls asleep on my shoulder. This usually happens when we are out walking in a mall and taby is already feeling sleepy. So I carry her, put her head on my shoulder and gently tap her on the back. Within a few minutes she is deep asleep. It gives me a great feeling to know that for her I am a secure place where she can peacefully fall asleep. However, it only works when we are out. At home she always wants to sleep with her mom. I am still waiting for the day when she will sleep on my arm all night long, and let her mother sleep peacefully as well.

Ever since Tabi turned 9-months, we have been noticing some major changes in her. Firstly, the stranger anxiety is gone and she is back to her social self, so that’s a good news.

But what’s significant is that she has started developing a personality. She can now express what she likes or dislikes. If you take a toy (or whatever she thinks is a toy) away from her hands, she will start protesting. Couple of months ago she stayed indifferent of whatever was snatched away from her hands. But now, if she is holding something and playing with it you dare not take it away from her, else you are gonna wish you were deaf!

She is a keen lover of chocolates. I don’t know how she detects the other person is having chocolate. How can someone, who has been in the world for less than 10 months, know there is chocolate inside this wrapper, even when she sees it for the first time. She just WANTS to have it, and nothing else.

Same is the case with ice-cream. We try to fool her by making yogurt look like ice-cream but she’s smarter than that. Bring in real ice-cream and she is game.

She has also learnt to tease people. When she sees somebody, she reacts as if she wants to go to that person, but when they come close to pick her up, she turns around and hugs the person originally carrying her, leaving the other person embarrassed.

It is very exciting to see her grow up and learn new tricks every day. We are always curious to see what she is going to do next.

Until few days ago, baby tabi was a social butterfly. She loved strangers. She never feared going to people she had never seen before. It was a blessing for us parents as we could leave her with anyone without worrying about how she might behave.

But lately things have changed. She has developed an anxiety for strangers. This first happened when we visited a friend few days back. She cried when someone picked her up. She had never cried like that before. Throughout that evening tabi never went to that person, crying every time he tried to make contact with her.

Then it started happening more frequently. A crying session starts even when she is picked up by people more familiar to her. She just wants to be in mama’s or papa’s lap.

A brief research on internet revealed that this is normal for 8-month old babies. They suddenly develop stranger anxiety which goes away in few weeks. So I guess this phase is temporary.