Friday, December 29, 2006

Goodbye 2006

2006 is a milestone year of my life. In Feb 06, I returned from my nearly four years posting in Taipei. Irene, my wife, and I returned with the good news of the arrival of our first child. Our baby boy, Shanle, was borned on 18 Oct 06. Today, I received the result of my examination for the last module of my degree programme in computer science at UniSIM. I passed! I am finally graduating after six long ardous years of part-time, long distance study.

2006 is also the year I started this blog of mine. Living a nomadic lifestyle, I have more friendships than the time I have to nurture them. I hope to keep in touch with my friends here. So far I am enjoying myself blogging, creating videos and sharing bits of my life with friends afar. As Shanle grows and my workload mounts higher, I may have less time to blog in 2007. But I will certainly try to blog whenever there are significant changes in my life.

Goodbye 2006.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Finding the Right Formula

In the past two weeks, Shanle was experiencing problem passing motion regularly. His stools were hard and little. At first, we thought it was due to him not taking enough fluid and so we tried to feed him more water to 'cool' him down. But we were wrong. According to Irene's gynae, the cause was the formula milk he was taking.

Shanle was taking Similac after Irene stopped breastfeeding. The richness in iron could have been too heaty for our baby and led to constipation. Our gynae was kind and gave us a free tin of Frisovom, a soya-based formula milk specially made for vomitting, constipation and colicky infants. The change of milk worked wonders and Shanle made a big poo the day he took Frisovom. All was fine except that the new formula milk does not dissolve easily in water. After every feed, we will find lumps of milk powder at the bottom of the bottle. The milk will also thicken during the feed making Shanle uncomfortable.

As Frisovom is a specialty formula, we thought it may be better to switch back for 'normal' milk after his constipation has eased. So we fed him Similac again yesterday (we still have a small inventory of Similac and it will be a waste to throw them away). We were worried whether Shanle might not want Similac anymore as Frisovom was more fragrant. But he took Similac without any resistance. It was fine during the day. But for the three feeds in the night, Shanle was very unsettled and cried non-stop shortly after every feed. He did not pass any motion for 24 hours and I gathered he must be constipated and probably feeling painful.

After discussing with Irene, we switched back to Frisovom this morning and Shanle managed to pass some motion shortly after the second feed. Irene noticed that the first pile of stools were quite hard and the subsequently stools were normal. I guessed our gynae was right about the formula and we will stick to Frisovom from now on.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

苦頭

有句諺語‘吃得苦中苦﹐方為人上人’常在我面對苦頭與挑戰時激勵著我。只有能吃大苦,才能夠成為出類拔萃的人。雖然我不能算上是出類拔萃﹐當了父親後我可是名符其實的‘人上人’了。不過這‘人上人’可真是不好當啊﹗產後的妻子身體經常不適﹐讓我十分擔心。所以我也不敢讓她過於勞累。家中的家務我就全盤包下來。現在打掃我可是馬虎不得。尤其是寶寶的床鋪還有周遭的環境我都得好好的消毒一番。這可是每個週末的作習。加上洗衣湯衣﹐我的週末就這樣過了﹐上網的時間也銳減了。除了家務﹐善樂的夜間生活我也得照顧。妻子也會起床幫幫忙﹐不過應為服藥感到昏沉﹐我也不敢讓她喂奶或換尿片。這麼早晚的折騰﹐我苦頭也真實吃了不少。不過﹐這一切不是沒有回報的。每當我看見善樂喝完奶那滿足的微笑﹐我的心中也會感到萬分的溫馨和滿足。我相信全天下的父母親也都曾經有過同樣的感動吧。在辛苦的過程﹐我也逐漸的成熟的許多。感覺一下子老了好幾歲。這撫育孩子是條不歸路。以後的苦頭還多著呢。就算如此﹐我從不曾後悔過生育的決定。所有的苦頭只會讓我更堅強﹐讓我成為一位出類拔萃的父親。這就是我新增的人生目標了﹗

Music Nournishes The Soul & Mind (Chinese Songs)......