Are You Really Ready?

For those readers who want to have babies: Before you decide to have a baby, PLEASE CONSIDER FOLLOWING CONDITIONS (some of them might last for years):

* You might not have the right to sleep all night any more, because your baby might cry.

* You can’t go anywhere as you like. If you won’t take baby with you, you have find a babysitter; if you take baby with you, you must know that you won’t be able to eat, talk or play freely. And you never take a baby to watch movie.

* Baby cries loudly, and you are unable to make it stop, making you want to find a hole to hide (or bury it instead).

* Taking baby to somewhere, it vomit all over its clothes (and probably your clothers), or worse, pee or sxxx.

* Forget about travelling lightly; you must take at least one bag of baby stuff with you.

* There is no difference whether you travel by bus, train, plane, or drive a car yourself. You have to buy a special seat for the baby if you drive a car; and you better check if the baby was left in your car when you lock the car.

* You became invisible; everybody who knows you have a baby won’t care about you anymore. They will only ask: “How is your baby?”

* You never go out late to have fun.

Well, what do you think? Are you really ready? Consider it seriously, because you can’t just dump a baby like a dog or a cat. (Though I am againt dumping a dog or a cat when you don’t want it.)

Building Self-confidence on babies

Becoming father for almost seven months, I found an interesting fact: Adults tend to prove themselves usful through the reaction of babies.

It is funny that when adults find babies have good reaction toward them, they tend to think themselves special. Therefore when I took Samuel with me, I usually heard: “He (Samuel) is smiling at me!” These people are not serious inclined to the attitude I mentioned above. But I am sure you do seeing some people referring themselves as “baby-killers”. In their opinion, what all parents did were wrong, only they are right; if a baby wouldn’t stop cring, they would grab the crying baby as fast as they could and hold it as fast as they could because “only they knew how to make a baby stop crying”.

How about me? I think I do have a little inclination. Basically, if Samuel stopped crying while I hold him, I would feel happy; if he kept crying, I felt upset.

Man are afraid of failure, I guess. Therefore even only making a baby stop crying make a man feel successful.

P.S. An advice to those with obvious inclination: Show some respect to the parents. Even you are facing first-time parents, please don’t act like you are knowing-everything-about-babies. You were once a first-timer, after all.

The Beginning (1): The Most Imperfect thing About Marriage

Believe it or not, I dreamed of a family since I was a kid, a home that glows yellow lights, looks warm and cosy. So when I finally prepared to get married, I was overjoyed. BUT there were some things about marriage made me uncomfortable, among them was raising children.

I didn’t like kids, even hated them. Especially most kids nowadays are horrible creatures, knowing nothing about manners. I thought I would never have child before I was fully prepared, because I couldn’t stand to see my child/children was/were loathsome. The question was: how long would it take to be fully prepared?

About “The Beginning”

“The Beginning” series of posts are my thoughts about being parents since the time I prepared to have children. They are numbered, but the events and thoughts in the posts do not necessarily happened in proper order.

The Privilege of Being A Father

Samuel is six months old now. We found a daytime baby sitter for him when he was one month old. Until now, I insist taking him home everyday, never let him stay at baby sitter’s home overnight. I did this for two reasons: One, I hoped that he could see his parents while he woke up in the morning; two, completely selfish reason, I want to see his smile every morning.

I never imagined that my son’s smile can give me such joy. Seeing his smiling and laughing make me feeling happy and satisfied. That feeling is difficult to describe, it is different from seeing lover’s smile. I guess you have to be a father to understand what I mean.

I think of our Father in heaven. Is He also happy while He sees us smiling to Him? If the words “Heavenly Father” have any indication, then I believe that He has the same feeling as we earthly fathers.

Suddenly, I find that being a father is such a privilege! Father would never match mother in terms of intimacy with children. Mothers have babies, give birth, and feed them with milk; fathers couldn’t do these. But when father tries to love his children with all he could, he is using a privilege – he has the opportunity to know how Heavenly Father loves us.