The daycare centres must have mastered the art of teaching babies how to hold their own bottles. Eric and Joel were sent to daycare centres when they were infants and I was working full time, so Eric learnt to hold his bottle when he was 3 months old, and Joel when he was 4 months old.

Being unemployed, I was fortunate that I could take care of Ezra at home and not send him to a daycare centre, not even one day. Ezra is 6 months old now, and I still have to hold his bottle. Propping his bottle with his blankie only helps when he’s sleepy and less animated.

Imagine how much household chores and blogging can be done when both your hand are free…gosh, I wonder how the the daycares do it?

My kids are at the ages where hugs are still abundant — they love being hugged and getting hugs. Eric would come to me for his big boy hug at random times, especially when he’s tired. Joel demands one every morning, noon, and night with such gusto that sometimes I would almost fall back as he run towards me and jumped, expecting me to catch him every time (do I have a choice not to?). When he’s not too excited, he’ll just calmly sit on my lap, grab my arms around him, and he’ll hum “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. Ezra… well, he’s still a baby, but what baby doesn’t like to be hugged? Ezra will either put his head on my shoulder, or be most alert, smiling and babbling himself away.

There will come the day when giving a hug to Mommy and Daddy becomes more and more sporadic, somewhat of an embarrassment, not to be given publicly. But that’s a long time away. I hope. I’ll take things one day at a time.

It so makes my day when I see a smile on my kids’ face, even so when they were still babies. Ezra is just a generous bundle of smiles and giggles these past month; it’s like a magic medicine that takes all my tiredness away just by looking at his happy face. I just need to look him in the eyes while I talk and he’ll start cooing, then smiling and even laugh a little. My mom gets a kick out of babysitting Ezra, because in this way she can talk the whole hour without worrying whether Ezra would be bothered with the noise!

It sometimes makes me forget that Ezra has the loudest cry compared to his big brothers, that even our pediatrician had to agree as he examined Ezra while he was still one day old!

Your bottle is my bottle, is how Joel sees it. I’m partly to blame for his behavior towards Ezra’s bottle, because I switched Joel’s to a bigger sized bottle while passing over his smaller bottle for Ezra’s use. Joel still hasn’t gotten the hang of the idea.

So what has happened is that not only is Joel drinking off his new bottle, he also drinks off Ezra’s (and Ezra’s formula) just because he enjoys it. I would make a bottle for Joel, and a bottle for Ezra, and when it’s Ezra’s feeding time, it’s abracadabra gone and the next thing I knew Joel was happily sucking his baby brother’s feed. Oh well.

By the way, I never meant to abandon this blog for so long. It’s just that, well, you know, life comes first, blogging second I hope my posting will resume to normal starting today. I’ll be doing a bit of back posting too just to fill up the gaps.

For the record.

• Ezra’s first fever: 22 July 2008
• Ezra’s first cold: 28 July 2008

Blame it on the movies. Before Ezra’s medical check-up, I was always under the impression that a child would definitely follow either his father’s or his mother’s blood type ONLY. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Ezra’s blood type was B, whereas mine was O and my husband’s was AB! It wasn’t right — it MUST be only either AB or O! I mean, that’s what the movies say right?! That the child must follow exactly the blood type of either one parent?!

After a little explanation by the pediatrician, I now understand that:

• If one parent is O and the other is either A or B, your child can be O or A, or O or B.
• If one parent is AB and the other is either A or B, your child can be either A, B or AB.
• If both parents are A or B, your child can be O or A, or O or B.
• If both parents are O, then your child can only be O.

There you go, a biology lesson learned. Damn those scary child-switch horror movies!