My exploration in life… (diary for baby!)

RACHEL gave us a scare with her fever which subsided for a while and fluctuated up again shortly after, followed by her rashed.  We were told by the doctor that her rashes were "heat rash" - it usually follows after a bout of fever and stays and goes after a couple of days.  Well, that happened, and YEN and I (especially me, the one without the medical expertise) were mightily worried.  She seems to have finally returned to her normal self, except the fact that she is crying quite a bit rom waking up in the middle of the night.  But isn’t that her normal self too nowadays??

YEN gave me the best Fathers’ Day presents yet (well, considering it’s only my second such celebration) - she took a photograph of RACHEL and herself, printed it using our photo-printer secretly (you can see this under my photos), all these when I went out to get us breakast on Fathers’ Day, and had RACHEL present me the photograph and a beannie toy of a lion saying "Number 1 Dad!".  I was overjoyed at receiving the gifts - the best one I had received from anyone thus far! =)

Well, two years have passed in a jifty.  I vividly remember writing here about my experiences, happy or not, in PESS, NIE here - almost on a weekly basis, and suddenly, the day that I’d looked forward to - to start teaching proper - is finally starting tomorrow!  Having said that, I’d like to show my appreciation to my family and friends (e.g. SHIRLEY GONG, WEILI, JOYCE SOH, FAIZAL, YONGSHENG, ADRIAN POO, ROZALI, ANDRE, KAIXIN, TYLER, LEE CHING, EVELYN, and many others) or their tolerance and continual help all these times.  I really hope to be able to do the same for all of you! =)

Time really flies!  Suddenly, we are approaching the month of July, and in less than two months’ time, we would be expecting a new arrival to our family!  We haven’t exactly confirmed his name (I’ll have to work on this soon!)…  All I know is that I hope that our baby is born healthy!  We look forward to this next milestone in our lives!

RACHEL has been running a temperature on and off for the past few days starting Saturday.  I had been very worried about her fever, as I was afraid it would somehow affect her brain and mental growth.  But YEN pointed out that the temperature wasn’t up to 39 (though it hit 38.4 at some point on Sunday), and RACHEL has been active - almost like her usual, normal self; we’d monitor her temperature and bring her to the doctors if it hit 39 degrees.

Her fever finally subsided and remained at stable condition (normal body temperature) yesterday evening after quite a few fluctuations.  But we discovered another problem at this time - she was having some kind of rashes on her body.  We brought her to a private clinic for consultation last night, but the amount of patients and the speed of how the queue move frustrated me - we waited almost two hours and the number of patients seen was barely ten!

Plus there weren’t seats for us.  And the many campaigns ran in our country - the courtesy and civic society ones - obviously fail as nobody seem to give a hoot to give up their seat for a pregant lady who was carrying a child (RACHEL was throwing another of her tantrums and didn’t want me to carry her then).  To top it off, there were seats reserved using a cake box!  I estimated that it would be another hour or two before our turn, and since RACHEL’s rash wasn’t serious then, I decided for us to return home.  We hoped that it would run off…

First thing this morning was to check if the rashes were gone.  It seems to have spread a little and we decided that we will bring her to SGH for consultation once she wakes up…

I start off this week’s entry by reporting our second wedding anniversary celebrations.  I feel so bad for not giving YEN a proper celebration the last year, perhaps we were revelling at the birth our our first child then that we were both too excited and relieved to really think of it…

This year, there was to be no excuse, I told myself.  Though I’m a little "filled with apprehension" with my coming teaching with ZHANGDE PRIMARY SCHOOL (I hope to have a good start to my teaching career so that it’ll be easier to motivate myself to improve along the way), I feel I just have to make the anniversary "a day to remember", at least for YEN.

I planned to pick her up on-the-dot after work, and proceed to a nearby shopping mall from SGH (TIONG BAHRU PLAZA, in this case) for some (window) shopping before proceeding to the "main course" of the day - dinner at THE JEWEL BOX @ MOUNT FABER.  I’d heard a bit about it over the Christmas holidays but we had not been to the place.

I looked up the Internet for relevant information, and was glad to find some help.  Car-parking was available at someplace near the foot of MOUNT FABER, I think.  Considering that YEN is pregnant with our second child and that it was a special occasion for us, of course valet parking was an option!

But it turned out that she was held up at work and could only leave work an hour later than expected.  So I just shortened the trip in TIONG BAHRU mall and head for dinner soon.  YEN was kept in suspense of where we were to have dinner as I wouldn’t tell her.  And I guess she was pleasantly surprised when I took her up MOUNT FABER…

We were greeted by the waitress who wished us a happy wedding anniversary before we were led to our seats.  That made YEN wonder what I had in stall for her!  Ha; actually, it wasn’t much - I’d just planned dinner and the in-house band to sing us a song I dedicated to her for the night.  She told me that she was very happy to feel so special, thanks to the planning and preparation by her love.  =)

It was a simply dinner and a nice night out.  I must remember to treat her right, especially on special occasions like these (hope I’m doing a passable job every other day!).  Why not?!  - I mean, this is the lady I spend the rest of my life with, who also looks out for me and takes care of me and the things at our home!  If she doesn’t deserve special attention from me, then not many would!

I am letting RACHEL walk more when we are outside, holding onto my hand; she is walking about fine at home and at YEN’s place in BEDOK.  On the way home last night, I put her on the ground to walk across the playground.  This morning, she enjoyed walking around in JURONG POINT’s basement (she really just walks round and round, moving in big circles!).  She is walking more and more steadily, though she still stumbles quite a bit and cannot balance herself too well.  But she’ll come along well, I’m sure!  =)

I just heard - many of my coursemates from PESS are offered the chance to cross-over to the 3rd and 4th years of the degree programme.  The list raised many eyebrows, I’m sure, me included.

No, I’m not talking about the people that are selected that surprised me.  What is surprising are some who have worked hard, or went all out to get a chance to cross-over, who probably should have been offered a chance based on their hardwork / results in the course so far.

LYNN told me she heard that our former ‘O’, ‘A’ / Polytechnic results were one of the factors considered.  Now that is not very pleasing to hear.  This effectively means that we are not given a fresh chance to excel as we would be judged on results of the past…  Oh well…

I’m sure not everyone is happy with the selection process of candidates joining the degree programme, but on NIE’s side, they’ll tell us that it was as fair as they could have been.  I hope those who were sad and not given a chance to get a degree immediately pick themselves up and move on from here…  For those who are offered the chance, good for you!  Congratulations and all the best for the next two years of studies!

Two more days to go - YEN and I will celebrate the second anniversary of our matrimony.  It hasn’t been exactly plain-sailing for us - we have our tiffs at times over differences in opinions and many times over my insensitivity of things…  But I’m so thankful YEN and I chose each other, and the birth of our beautiful girl - all these have surely become the most important people / milestones in my life.  I still wish to, and work to do all I can for my loves and our future together.  Thank you, girls!  =)

How should we celebrate the occasion?  I racked my brains, but have yet to be able to come out with something.  YEN says we’ll probably just need to go out after her work for a meal and a walk.  I think she deserves more.  Let me think what I can do for her!