Mine is bigger than yours

Following rapidly on the heels of my competitive mother post, I had my first ever view of competitive fathering over the weekend.

The Boy doesn't know that many people with children, and nobody with a baby the same age as Eve. However, at the weekend we went to spend an afternoon with my very good friend P, her little boy (who is 11 days younger than Eve) and her partner, S.

P and I didn't know each other very well before we were pregnant, but have become firm friends since. It was P who I got stranded, and rescued, with when we were both 4 months pregnant and out in a canoe. We are both pretty relaxed about our little ones and often turn to each other for a bit of reassurance that things are OK.

However, the Boys (hers and mine) had never met before.

Initially there was a bit of males circling each other as they tried to suss each other out. P and I watched on, bemused, as both Boys clutched their respective babies and tried to outdo each other in terms of doing things with them. The Boy fed Eve, S played with his baby. S showed that his baby could catch a ball and kick it (sort of), the Boy showed that Eve could stand (with a lot of help). S showed how his baby could put his feet in his mouth, the Boy encouraged Eve to chat to us all. S sat with his baby on the side of the pool, the Boy made sure Eve went paddling (and got her bum wet).

P and I watched this delightful show of male posturing with babies, bemused, and knocked back a couple of glasses of wine.

As we left, S was trying to teach his baby to stand and once we got home the Boy started trying to get Eve to play with her feet.

Competitive fathers. Possibly the only thing worse than competitive mothers.

Porker

Eve is a rather big girl now, and putting everything in her mouth at the moment, including her Tigger toy.

For mothers everywhere

Happy Mothers' Day

(the US one - sorry Mum)

School for the gifted

I defy almost any parent to say that they have never once compared their child to another. Even at this age, at my baby group, we compare how long they sleep for, how much they eat, whether they sit or stand, how long for and with what kind of assistance. A lot of this is driven by the need for reassurance, but there is also a hint of competition in it. However, this pales into insignificance compared to a certain Miss M of Hong Kong.

In the riveting Tots2Teens supplement in the SCMP this week is a profile on an 11 year old girl. Under the heading of "gifted children" the Miss M of the article seems to excel at everything. She is at performance level for the violin, has won all sorts of prizes in music contests, is top of her class, won a Putonghua storytelling competition and numerous other awards. All very impressive. But then you read between the lines. After she finishes school, Miss M attends music lessons or "interest classes" until 7pm when she goes home for dinner and then does her homework. She first found she loved the violin when she attended a concert aged 4 and then begged her mother to take her to lessons. Two things wrong here. Firstly, I know of no normal 4 year old who could sit still long enough to be taken to a concert. And, secondly, 4 year olds don't beg, they scream and yell. Apparently her greatest disappointment was missing the 60th Hong Kong Schools of Music Festival because of a flu scare, and she has "pages and pages of certificates kept in a thick box file". When exactly does this child see her friends? Play outside? Watch TV? Just be, well, an 11 year old. Then you read more, and find out that her mother gave up her career after having Miss M and "devotes most of her time taking Miss M to different courses". Suddenly it all makes sense.

Finally, "While she finds her day hectic, Miss M enjoys every session and never complains".

The whole article left me feeling very sad for her.

Perspectives

Yummy Mummy works for a bank. Banks are not, in the present climate, very happy places. Although the bank I work for has not had the largest write downs in the market, that is reserved for the large Yank tank that is Citi, we are the next best. Although I work for part of the bank that is still doing very well, it was inevitable that Yummy Mummy would get hit in some way by the navel gazing and restructuring.

So, this week I found out that my unit and job may be changing, or it may not. The problem being decisions have been made on high but the ramifications have not yet been worked out. People are worried about their jobs, what they will be doing and as always in these situations looking for new ones. A year ago this would have been me.

However, as I sat at home in shorts and t-shirt listening to the announcements that my world is about to change, possibly, or not, I found myself not really worrying at all. Aside from the practicalities that it is highly unlikely I would be booted out and, even if I was, jobs in my specialism are easy to come by, the real reason I didn't care that much is because things just look different now. Where there was once the ambitious career girl, there is now someone who loves her job and loves having it but I now find that my life is much more than that and no longer is the job defining who or what I am and will achieve in my life.

That role now falls to Eve.

So, while my colleagues were scurrying around in a panic, I shut down my laptop at 7, played with Eve, read her a story and opened a nice bottle of red once she was asleep.

Racing again

Seminal moment in my return-to-fitness-post-baby effort occurred yesterday, I did a race.

Well, sort of.

It was a time trial lasting about 50 minutes, in my least favourite class of boat (ocean going double scull - like rowing a tank through treacle), with the husband of a very good friend who was too injured to do the race in his outrigger canoe. Sadly the conditions and a couple of physical issues (like me having had a baby less than 4 months ago) were against us and we didn't perform to our full potential. In fact, I was a bit stroppy about the whole thing because given a bit more training and fitness I think we could win rather than coming half way down the pack.

But, it was my first race, and I was properly tired last night, and I have blisters on my hands today to prove it.

Now for some proper rowing...

TV or not TV, that is the question

Only have I just managed to deaden the guilt of (pick one, two or any of the following), BPA bottles, pollution, going back to work, breast feeding, starting to exercise and spending time away from Eve etc etc etc and up pops a new one in the form of the TV.

There is no doubt that, even at 17 weeks (as she turned yesterday) the TV has an allure for Eve. In the way of Boys and their toys, when we moved to this flat the Boy ditched the old, and perfectly servicable, TV and bought a flat screen black behemouth that stares aggressively at me from the wall. In the great scheme of TVs in HK, and we once ended up at a colleague's place where the boys marveled at the TV and surround sound while the women shouted over the noise, it is pretty inoffensive but it still dominates one wall. We rarely have the TV on when Eve is around. A side street to my main guilt about not spending every waking hour with Eve is the idea that when we do she should have our full attention.

However, sometimes it is on when she is around and she is magnetically drawn to the moving, colourful pictures and sounds that it emits. Whereas she is normally a chirpy, squirmy, chatting thing - when she is in front of the TV she is silent and still. For this reason I can see why people use it to babysit their babies, but it also slightly horrifies me that even at this age it has such a behavioural effect.

Therefore, we are pretty much sticking to the no TV rule until such a time that her language and attention is good enough to actually interact rather than just stare.

The exception to this is sport. Earlier this week she watched the extra time of the Chelsea vs. Liverpool champions league game with me, and yesterday Man United thrashing West Ham with the Boy. She will, of course, be watching the Olympic rowing come the summer.