Backtrack SG: Gideon

My whole highlight and main reason for going back to Singapore in June (other than coinciding with the kids’ school holidays), was to see my new nephew, Gideon! He was barely two months old when I first saw him – so cute! Rosabelle got quite jealous seeing me carrying him, and even cried sometimes, wanting to clamber onto me so dangerously that I had to toss Gideon onto somebody else before she crushed him. There was once when I narrowly pulled Gideon by his ankles as she budged her way in as I was carrying him whilst seated on the floor, with his head narrowly missing the hard floor just millimeters off. Phew!
Like all babies, they are cutest when they are happy or satisfied, and if he’s well-behaved, he can lie awhile by himself on the bed, staring at the ceiling/surroundings, and he has sure fattened up slightly since birth.
He even joined us downstairs for walks at times, taking his throne on the Quinny Buzz stroller we left behind for the first time on 15 June. Doesn’t he look swamped by the huge stroller? (Ok, maybe pink isn’t his thing as we’d bought a girly colour for Rosabelle then…)
He will be lie in his bed quite happily (not the case now, it seems, as he prefers his rocker, or obviously, to be carried)…...and lay unsuspecting as Rosabelle trots/runs into the room and threatens to engulf him, or worse, pull him down the bed, with her over-zealousness. We adults have to keep a watch on her at all times to make sure she’s not disturbing him from his slumber, or patting/resting her head on him too hard. Maybe that’s where she learnt to pick up all the baby cooing and will make babyish sounds when I ask her to, haha!
Being so helpless, he will obviously be the butt of jokes as Toy Story 3 was the rage and they made him Buzz Lightyear… (that’s me in the bottom right corner…)
Simon and Marianne, being older, knew how to take care of Gideon better, and I think both boys look very similar!
However, before you start getting misled and think that Gideon is all peaches and cream, and smiles and gurgles, boy you are oh-so-wrong!
Our boy can sure pack a bawl, and he cries like a duck. Serious. Even his own mother thinks so. He will go, ‘Ark! Ark! Ark! Ark! Ark!’ continuously until I had to ask my poor sister to keep her bedroom door closed when she made his feeds at night (and as he lay there quacking away), or it’ll risk waking Rosabelle up as well… His own mother was carrying him, and laughing away, as I snapped this series of him and his naughty cries – little wonder he’s not happy!
But when he has/finishes his feeds, eternal bliss…
Especially when my sis or my mum carried him. Though there were days when my sis brought us out, and it was just the maid and my mum, and the latter swore that Gideon was out to take revenge on her by not sleeping a wink throughout, wanting to be carried all the time as he lay waiting for his mother to come back and punish her for 'abandoning' him.
I’m glad we also had the honour of witnessing Gideon’s baptism whilst in Singapore. It was at 4pm on 20 June, so I made sure Rosabelle took her afternoon nap prior. She was still sleeping when I carried her out, and luckily woke up in the car on the way there in a good mood, so that I could change her into an outfit befitting the occasion – the Cotton On butterfly/angel-winged tank and auspicious-looking red tights, haha! She obviously couldn’t sit still throughout the service, milling around the church and going ‘No more!’ when the hymns finished, and suddenly becoming so attached to my sis and brother-in-law by wanting to go over to their seats all the time.
Both my dad and mum took turns to look after her as well.
Here, she is trying to kiss Daniel, and when he refused, she even squeezed his cheeks, aiyo!
There’s the star of the day, looking so cute in an oversized frock, haha!
After the baptism finished, we took a quick shot outside the church – love this picture and how Singaporean we all look in our reds and whites (ok, other than my mum's slightly salah-looking white polka-dotted black pants...).
After that, we headed to my sis’ place for dinner, where Rosabelle also ate from the buffet table. There were a lot of other relatives’ and friends’ kids, and Matthias’ cousin, Adrienne, even got Rosabelle a nice magnetic letters gift set as a gesture of appreciation since I had loaned her some medicines when her kids unfortunately fell ill when they were in Beijing. So nice of her. Rosabelle, one of the smallest in the lot, loved the company of the older kids and had a field day playing around, but was up to her naughty self when she pushed a doll house against an older girl, daughter of my sister’s uni mate.
When we left that night, one of their church friends, an Indian lady, was greeting her, and she milled around her, walking around as she eyeballed her. Guess it’s not everyday that she sees an Indian in China, so she must have found this person odd-looking, haha!

I am so looking forward to next seeing Gideon – must surely have grown a lot by the last time we saw him! (Though the ark-ark-arking is still there – my sis put him to the phone as he was crying when they last called, haha!)