Yes, some parents think it is insane --- sheer madness for some. When I define travelling with a toddler, I mean travelling OVERSEAS by plane. Yes, by plane and not by train or by boat. By plane.

Some of you are already gasping in horror. I know of mothers who dare not step out of the house with their 2 year old unless a grandparent or domestic helper assists. But then again, I, Daddy of my 2 year old son, have had prior experience venturing out alone with the kid to faraway places...err...well...if you consider taking a public bus 6 stops away to Orchard Road and having breakfast with him at McDonalds...yeah, I qualify.

Or wait, wait, wait...there was this time I drove to Sentosa with him and we viewed the flower show together--- alone, without any assistance.

The Wife looks at me and gives me the look that translates as 'LAME' --- bring a boy to a FLOWER SHOW??

Eh? At least I tried right?

So those were some of the prior experiences I've had travelling with my boy. But what about flying to Los Angeles which is about 21 hours away --- including a stopover in Tokyo?

Now we're talking.

The Wife and I felt that we had to put our minds into strategy --- not so much for the kid, but more for the preservation of our sanity. What time should we depart Singapore? What should we do on the plane? Will he play with the games on KrisWorld's entertainment system? Does SIA have 'Barney and Friends' on-demand? Yes --- call SIA and find out of they have 'Barney and Friend's. So what's keep-him-occupied-activity-Plan A? Plan B? What if we exhaust all options? What if he cries when everyone is trying to sleep? Will they kick us out of the plane for a noisy kid? Will they give us a parachute if they kick us out of the plane?

The long and short of it --- we decided to fork out a little bit more to do the following:

 

Stopover in Tokyo 

No kidding. This was a life saver. It helped us all recuperate faster from any potential or actual jet lag. Sure, we forked out an extra couple of hundreds of dollars for each plane ticket, had a total of 3 nights accommodation at Japanese hotels, but it was worth it. We got to see Tsukiji Fish Market all over again --- thanks to my jet lagged boy kicking us out of our slumbers at 5am. Where could we do at 5am in the morning with a jet lagged toddler anyways?The bonus --- we had great sushi for breakfast. Itadakimasu!

 

Buy a full seat on the plane

Yeah, we could have put him in the bassinet on the plane and got him on the plane free --- if he is under 2 years old, which technically at the time of travel, he was. But it would have been terribly uncomfortable for him. Size was a factor. Also, imagining taking him out of the bassinet everytime the plane hits turbulence? Nope, get him a seat --- 75% of full adult price.

 

Make Play Dough

The Wife found this recipe mixing flour and cream of tartar to make play dough to bring onto the plane. I was concerned. For a moment, it looked like Semtex --- you know, the stuff that looks like plasticine and can be used as an explosive?

"You think they will let us onto the plane?" I asked my wife looking at her kneading the putty looking stuff. "I mean, the US customs might just freak out and put our poor 2 year old kid on the Terror Watch List."

I got the same 'LAME' look (pls refer to the part above on FLOWER SHOW).

But yeah, it was quite ingenious of her, and it worked wonders on the kid.

 

Bring lotsa diapers

The airlines do provide some complimentary diapers for kids (I mean, if they carry diapers...I mean, pads, for ladies, diapers for babies are a no brainer, right?), you should be ready to haul a decent number onto the plane --- my kid poos 5 times a day. You get the picture. As for changing the kid in toilet, that's a whole new ball game altogether. In short, if you are Asian, not too tall, not too fat, you would both fit in to tag team a diaper change in the plane toilets. Where to throw the diapers? Hell no, not down the toilet bowl! You could cause the plane to nose dive and then there will be decompression and those dangly oxygen masks will start falling in front of your face --- all because of some crap. Do the right thing --- put it into an air sickness bag and bin it. 

 

In short, we survived the travelling. The Wife did a great job of explaining to the kid that we were going onto the plane (the open air aeroplane viewing gallery at Narita airport really helps, but what a potential terrorist launch point), the singing and the reading of story books...we all did not get to sleep much. But for seeing the joy on our kid's grandparents' faces...priceless.

One of the toughest things a parent faces is when your child misbehaves.

 Just yesterday, we were at Shokudo, Raffles City. There's a nice little play area for kids and a slide thrown in for good measure.

My boy was getting ready to climb up the slide when another boy, about 3 years his senior, came charging in and cut the queue.

The wife chided the boy gently and asked him to take his turn, hoping that his parents would do likewise. However, the boy's parents were not in sight and so 'charging boy' got his way. And he did not stop at that; he continued cutting the queue of other kids. 

This was when I came in and gave the kid a stern 'you must take turns' but to no avail. By this time, his parents had appeared and we so hoped that they would do something about his behaviour.

I walked away from the slide to chat with some friends. Some time passed and from the corner of my eye, I saw the wife come fuming towards my direction and muttered something about wanting to give that boy 'a tight slap'. 'Charging boy' had wanted to jump the queue again and my son was in the way. For some reason, 'charging boy' decided to take a swipe at my son, throwing a punch at my son's head because he could not get his way. Thankfully, he is not a born boxer and missed.

I stood up and headed toward the direction of 'charging boy'. His parents were not around again. I walked up to him and as soon as I did, his parents reappeared from nowhere and beckoned him to follow them home. In response, he gave a scream of dissension, to which, his father (i suppose it was his father) gently told him in a soothing voice, "No son, you cannot do that."

Not giving his father two hoots, he ran out of the restaurant into oblivion.

I do not claim my boy to be an angel all the time. He has his moments and there are times when we have to deal with him. Of late, he has gotten into the habit of throwing a tantrum by lying on the floor and beating his arms and legs on the floor. Sometimes ignorance works; other times smacking him works. But in all those cases, he got the idea after we applied discipline to his behaviour.

With 'charging boy', I do not actually blame his behaviour. It is his parents I have to take to task.

There was a story documented some 3,000 years ago, of a father who was a high ranking religious leader in a foreign country. His had 2 sons whom he raised but were a handful for him to handle. The 2 sons went into neighbouring countries to rob the people and rape the women. When this religious leader found out about their deeds, he called his sons and basically said this to them, "Sons, I have heard about the things that you have done. It is not good."

And that's all he said to them.

His sons became more rotten and eventually were killed in the midst of executing their evil deeds. Their father, upon hearing of their deaths, slipped and fell to his death.

My friends, parenting is not an easy task, but it has to be done. I pray you have the courage to do what is right for your children, and for society at large. Otherwise, the people that will suffer might ultimately be yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

OK, I can blame no one else but myself for allowing this fiasco to take place.

You see, you dads out there, how many of you have actually brought your 2-year old son to the toilet and made him wait for you to pee?

Mums would know what to do --- just bring them to the toilet cubicle! It's a no brainer for the ladies.

For the men, ermm, you have options.

 

Option 1: Bring them into the cubicle and make them wait as you complete what you have to do, whether it is big or small.

I have been adopting this option consistently without any trouble. I remember the first time I brought him into the cubicle for me to do execute my 'small business', I found him leaning from behind my legs and peering at the curious site of daddy projecting a fountain into the toilet bowl. I was half expecting him to actually play with the stream (he usually likes playing with water) and so I quickly did the deed and closed shop. 

 

Option 2: Do your deed in the urinal, praying that your son behaves

With that, I mean that every dad hopes that their son does not stick their hand into the urinals and explore the bacteria count in the toilet.

It was on this particular day, when I had just picked up Marc from childcare, that i needed to use the loo for 'small business'. And so I parked the car and walked into the nearby toilet. 

I decided to take a chance. There was no one in the toilet. I felt confident about doing a neat and quick job. So I headed to a urinal.

Now, the toilet has a row of about 10 urinals. 

Yikes!

But I shall forge on.

"Son, you wait here. Daddy will be right with you. Wait wait."

Marc looked curiously around the toilet as Daddy did the pee.

I kept my eye on my boy, as if my stare could direct his every movement.

But of course that did not work. For my boy is a smart and inquisitive chap who decided that it was time for him to learn new things and experience new sensations. 

I was helpless as I saw him walk up to urinal number 6 (I was at number 8) and reach into the urinal.

You know this scene --- child reaches out to touch the forbidden fruit and dad yells out a 'NOooooo' in slow motion...but to no avail.

What you see next is Marc holding up the cake of deodorant found in urinals, and he smiles at Daddy, showing his new found prize.

The subsequent scene is really not much to mention, but basically, close shop fast fast and then grab my son, dunk him into the sink and was, wash, wash, scrub, scrub, scrub.

And of course, I have an alcohol based sanitizer in the car to top off the decontamination process.

As I buckled him into the child seat, I looked at him with a mixture of disgust and a tinge of admiration. Digust is self explanatory. But the admiration part, yeah, it was like my son had gone where no sane person would have gone (no, my son is NOT insane, thank you). And yet, I was tempted to ask my son how it felt like being so brave to hold up a cake of urinal deodorant. 

I am pretty sure that if he could string his sentences right, he would say something like, "Oh, it was nothing really, dad. This one was dry, not wet and dripping like the others at Vivocity."

Can you just see me beaming with pride? 

 

And why not? Perhaps sometime down the road, when the time is right and the perfect opportunity comes along, we might do just that!

But for now, let's just float gently back from cloud 9 and arrive on terra firma...good ol' solid ground.

When I was approached to be interviewed and photoshot (if there is such a word), I gave it some thought. Was this the right time to 'go public'? Some of you might think --- 'Are you nuts? Newspaper want to feature you, say yes lah!'

Timing is everything. With H1N1 going around, the Asian Youth Games, Michael Jackson's passing (hey, it matters!) would it be appropriate and timely for us to be featured in an article? Well, the decision was made, and so the paper sent along a photographer to do the shoot at my place.

To any of you who might think that doing a photoshoot is easy, think again (I actually now do pity those who participate in 'America's Next Top Model'). I mean, in the past, I used to do work supervising photoshoots. Now, being 'shot' at, it was whole new experience. Along with me in this experience was my dear son, who is actually the focus of the photo, honestly.

So we sat down and arranged some props, trying to put Marc in position --- that was the easy part. The tough part was getting him to smile.

"Your son very serious leh," quipped the photographer. I really admire her patience as she tried coaxing Marc to smile and 'look joyful'.

(Note: The photo shoot was taken just before dinner time and Marc was really hungry. Bad time huh?)

There must have been more than 50 shots taken from all angles to try and capture a 'smiling Marc'. Yeah, he was cranky, fussing and hungry. Who could blame him? (Strong reaction to hunger and lack of food is genetically traced from The Wife)

Just before the shoot, I had completed a lecturing assignment and was rather pooped. So Daddy has to look energetic, Marc has to look happy. It was not going well.

As the shoot was taking place, Ah Gong was snapping away with his panasonic lumix camera, beaming with pride that his grandson was going to receive so much publicity (he used to be in advertising). The repeated pleas of 'Uncle, uncle, try not to blcok my camera flash' was not really heeded. But eventually, Ah Gong was disciplined enough to restrain himself from compromising the photo quality.

Ah Ma was singing and clapping her hands in tandem with the musical rhythm from an episode of Barney & Friends, urging Marc to react joyfully. We sort of stumbled upon the idea that if we put on a Barney DVD with the 'If you're happy and you know it' song, he would react animatedly, as he usually does. It worked...for a while. And then Marc sort of quizzically looked at us when we kept playing back the entire song over and over and over again.

He's a smart boy.

But that was good enough. Photographer called it a day and it was a wrap.

It took her 1 hr and 15 mins to get just this one perfect shot.

Daddy fell exhausted onto the sofa. Marc ran to his booster seat and was promptly fed his dinner (we usually let him feed himself. You can understand why we fed him this time around). Ah Gong and Ah Ma browsed their recently taken shots of Marc and were gushing praises about how Marc looked so handsome.

Now that I have to agree.

This fact can be genetically traced to The Daddy.

(I see my wife's eyes roll in disgust)

  

Hi all!

Well, let me kindly introduce myself.

I am known as Daddy-O at the Babywishes team. No, not Sugar Daddy; nor am I the Big Daddy. Just Daddy-O.

Now, the question that begs an answer is this --- why is a human being of the male species blogging on a website that has to deal with babies and mums? I mean, hands up to all the ladies who complain about how your husbands/male partners just stand aside and watch instead of giving you a hand with the baby.

And that is precisely one of the reasons why I did NOT want to write for this blog in the first place. I fear for my life once your husbands/male partners get incensed with jealousy after hearing you extol about the experiences of Daddy-O with handling babies and being such a ‘hands-on’ Dad. You can never underestimate such things you know. And while this is not quite the same as an illicit affair, imagine how your partners would take it if you kept going on and on about how wonderful advice you got from Daddy-O; or how much of a man Daddy-O is because he changes his son’s diaper.

OK, so my wife thinks that I am overreacting here.

But really, lest you think I am the ‘perfect father’, I hereby declare, I am not! I know of many Singaporean fathers who are great with their kids. It just so happens that I have had the opportunity to receive some insights into parenting and actually had to be a little more hands-on than usual. As they say, if you cannot beat ‘em, join ‘em!

In defense of the male species, ladies, let me just say that men in general are not naturally predisposed towards looking after babies and kids. Seriously, a lot of men are terrible at the usual diaper changing, kid feeding and child rearing. Of course, it does not mean that this is an excuse for men not to help out in bringing up your kid.

So guys, help me out here --- do give a hand in raising your kids.

But ah! I hear some naysayers already.

“Do baby stuff? Bah! I bring the bread to the table man! Why should I fuss with such basic stuff that women should handle?”

It does not take a scientist to tell you that kids who grow up in the presence of both a fatherly and motherly figure are generally more able to handle life better than those from a single parent family. Yes, I know, there are definitely exceptions, but it is my strong belief that there is a reason why the basic family unit should consist of a father and a mother.

(To gay union couples, sorry folks, this blog is not targeted at you)

So fathers, do what you can to help out the ladies in bringing up your kids. It’ll help in your relationship with your child and more importantly, with your lady.

I’ll write more in time to come. I welcome your feedback and would love to hear from you.

Feel free to drop me a note at enquiries@babywishes.com.sg
Happy Parenting!



Daddy-O