How time flies! I've been a parent for a year, imagine that. I now totally appreciate and love MY mum on a whole new level and regret every single harsh word I've thrown at her. Because, seriously, you can not begin to imagine the sacrifices that a woman makes for her child until you've been through it yourself. Especially in these times when a woman not only has to keep house but bring home the bacon as well.

Tyler's birthday was on Sunday. We had a quiet celebration - just family members - at Peach Garden. I picked the place, which is a, um, rather upmarket Chinese restaurant because I wanted to give my in-laws and my parents a fantastic treat for being so super. The meal was excellent and I'm still trying my best not to think about the hefty bill that was toted up at the end of it. Highlights: shark cartilage soup, wasabi prawn, deep-fried perch with plum sauce, pulut hitam (black glutinous rice dessert) served in cocounut. We hardly had space left for Tyler's gorgeous birthday cupcakes from the marvellous Cupcake Momma. ( I wish I had half her cupcake-making skills. )

This morning, I realised that I haven't taken a photo of my little man since Chinese New Year in February. So I became all indulgent-parent-like and began snapping away.

( Here be photos of my bb. )

He's kind of couch-potato-y and not doing anything in the photos. But if I were to take pictures of his real-life activities - and I can assure you, extremely active he is - he'll just appear as a blur in the photos.

My upstairs neighbours are the most uncivilised lot of people I've ever met. I've only seen some of them, but as far as I can make out, there's a cantankerous old woman, three or four of the most ill-behaved children on the planet, and a couple in their 30s, whom I presume are the old woman's children and parents of said kids.

Good lord. All they do the whole day is talk to each other at the top of their voices and slam things. The old woman, all she does is nag at everyone else in an incredibly loud voice. Sometimes, I hear them arguing in the wee hours of the morning, like at 4am. They don't seem to place much value on personal hygiene. The kids are dressed in wrinkly, un-ironed clothes. I once saw one of them running around in public without any pants. Like, with his pee-pee showing. WTF.

The kids. OMG, the horror. I live on the 18th floor and they're just above me. The kids throw all manner of objects out of their window, including their food. Once, rice landed on my window sills. Often, there would be streaks of dried-up liquids on the windows. And yesterday, they threw water bombs! Bloody hell. Because it was such a sunny day, almost everyone had their laundry hung out to dry. The pests must have been rubbing their hands with glee.

Once, when my mum was over at my place, she went up to scold them because water from their wet clothes were dripping on our laundry. The old woman basically said too fricking bad. And her presumed daughter also said something to the effect of c'est la vie (in a much less elegant way, of course) and that if we didn't like it, we can jolly well move to a house. Yeah, I can see where the kids' lack of social graces came from.

I don't see any way out of this except to grin and bear it. A couple of days after my mum confronted them, they happily washed their windows with soapy water that splashed into my flat. So I suspect that any complaint against them will be met with more heinous deeds. I've thought of pasting a note at the notice board downstairs, but I'll probably be arrested for vandalism. Ugh. I hatehateHATE the inconsiderate SOBs.

My boss phoned and reminded me today to mail in my appraisal form. I've been really tardy in doing it, partly because I don't want to be reminded of work. I go back to work in less than a month. As someone who never wanted children, I can't believe I'm saying this but I will be seriously torn up "leaving" Tyler and going back to work. I still don't like children in general (see: above), but with your own, it's just different.

Anyhoos, here's a ( photo of my bb, age 2 months and 3 weeks )

My life as I knew it has been turned topsy-turvy by the arrival of one Baby Tyler on June 3. Good grief. Has it been almost two weeks already? Long story short. I had baby Tyler via C-section on June 3 after 12 hours of labour brought on by a failed induction attempt. Baby was too big for my pelvis apparently. Which is weird coz I've always complained about my wide hips. But yeah, he's quite big at 3.865 kg (about 8.5 pounds). I was awake throughout the procedure, which was really surreal coz I could feel people touching me and pulling the baby out -- without the pain, thank goodness.

My life now revolves around breastfeeding, diaper changing and doing laundry. It doesn't sound that time-consuming but consider this: He feeds (and thereafter, poops) every two to three hours and has no concept of night or day. Which leads to one very sleep-deprived mama. In fact, I'm pretty much in a zombified state as I type this. When I was in the operating theatre, I was still joking with the medical staff about being able to watch World Cup matches, which come on between 9pm and 3am here. Was I wrong. The boy has no fixed sleeping pattern at all. So I try to catch some ZZZZZ's whenever I can. Except now, when I'm updating my LJ. I don't even know if I'm making sense, hahaha.

( Pictures! )

In other news, I'm shocked... shocked that franzferdinand.org is no more and that ex-fan Graham Searle feels let down by FF. Even the forum is gone, wtf? Geez, I must have been away longer than I thought.

Great. Baby's crying. So long for now, internets. Real life (and hopefully, 40 winks) beckons.