Life Before You..

Dear Mini-N,

When I started this blog, I told myself that I must write about how daddy and mommy lived our lives before you came around so that when you eventually read this 10 years down the road, you'll see how we have or have not changed over the years. I'm not sure actualy if I prefer us to have changed a lot over the years because life now is pretty fun in its own way. But maybe, just maybe, if we changed, we would make better parents because life now is like living in a big fat bachelor pit.

You see, mommy and daddy are not quite the cleaning type. So most of the time, the house is in a mess, laundry undone, dishes unwashed. We spent most of our times, downloading and watching lots of US TV series, and our favourites being "Desperate Housewives", "Lost", "24", "House" and "Heroes". We eat dinner in front of the TV most of the time watching one of these exciting series. If we didn't have an episode waiting for us downloaded into the X-box, we'll pop in a DVD. Occasionally mommy has a Chinese drama series to follow. For these, Daddy doesn't quite participate in watching but mommy always voluntarily re-tells the plot of the day's episode to daddy whether he wants to hear it or not.

We play lots of games on our game consoles. Mini-N, this is the era when the X-box and the Wii game console is in fashion while the Sony Playstation III is losing out. We have both of those high fashion consoles and there are a few games we play over and over again, such as "Zelda" and "Psychonauts". Although it's a good game, "Munch Odyssey" is a no-no in this home because it's an EX-ed game (meaning a game daddy played with his ex.. pooh! pooh!)...

We also play a lot of board games, the favourite being Monopoly and Rummikub. Mommy prefers Rummikub anyday because she losses to daddy with Monopoly 9 out of 10 games, mostly because your daddy's a BIG cheat. When it comes to Monopoly, you gotta be careful with your daddy, that sneaky one. Even your Opa had to resort to cheating to battle your dad the few times he was here in Malaysia. Mommy's a sore loser so most of the time, we avoid Monopoly and go with Rummikub instead.

Rummikub is a game introduced by your Opa and Oma when they were in Malaysia early this year. This will be a game you'll learn to play the moment you start to count. It's a game that definitely tests your intelligence and IQ. The first time Mommy played Rummikub with Opa and Oma, she was very worried about creating the wrong kind of impression (being dumb and slow) since she lost quite terribly to the old folks... so that night she quietly asked daddy to steal the board game into the room and kiasu-ly played all night long. When Opa and Oma went off for a short holiday, mommy also kiasu-ly forced daddy to play every night so that when Opa and Oma came back, mommy's as good at the game as everyone else.

Daddy and mommy still plays Rummikub at least once a week during bedtime and the worst side of ourselves come out when we're dueling away on the game. We hurl all sorts of insults at each other while playing, some of mommy's favorite lines being, "What do you know? You don't know anything!" and daddy's favourite insult being, "Take this! This is for you and your leprosy friends". Ofcourse, I don't have any leprosy friends but it's just a figure of speech/insult. We also call each other "bowling ball head, egg head, small penis...", basically anything you can imagine. It's not very good example for the young I know, so this side of us probably will have to be repressed when you come about. And not forgetting your dad has this chanting song that goes, "You are a loser.. A big fat loser"... He sings it in a very Enigmatic Gothic tune which he says has a power of making me lose the game if he sings it over and over again. Yeah, it drives me nuts sometimes so maybe that's how it makes me lose.

On weekends, since we're in a country like Malaysia where shopping is key, weekends are spent mostly in a shopping complex such as One Utama, The Curve or Midvalley. Most of the time, we watch a movie. We talk endlessly about how we should go outside and do some sports but we never seem to be able to drag our fat behinds out in the sun to do it. In this arena, Gong Gong and Po Po are much more successful. They go for a morning walk every morning without fail and on top of that, Gong Gong spends at least 2 hours at the driving range every day.

As for your mommmy and daddy the 2 young 'uns, we walk past the pool to get to our front door everyday and everytime, we have this partial longing and yet guilty look on our faces but we almost always manage to find an excuse on why we can't go out to the pool that day. There's someone else in the pool, the water's too cold, mommy's swimming suit is getting out of fashion... etc..

Once daddy made a new year resolution to swim for 30 mins everyday but unfortunately the resolution never lasted beyond mid-February. Mommy once dragged daddy to sign up for a gym nearby and unfortunately, we never made it to the gym more than twice before we finally canceled the membership a few months later.

Once in a while, mommy and daddy banters about something mommy call the great Passage Thru India mystery. Whether or not many years back when we were still dating, daddy secretly had dinner with his ex at Passage thru India while telling mommy that it was dinner with a friend. Ofcourse till today, mommy still highly suspects that the secret dinner took place and till today, daddy still denies it endlessly. Mini-N, I suspect you'll never hear the end of this.

Today for example, being a Sunday, we woke up at mid morning and sat in bed for close to an hour just talking about where we should have breakfast. Being pregnant and great and all that, Mommy usually has the final say. We dragged ourselves out of bed to a nearby mamak, had nasi lemak and roti telur then dragged ourselves back home. Believe it or not, we spent most of the rest of the day in bed, where mommy was reading Harry Potter 7 and daddy was playing Sim City on his spanking new Vaio laptop next to her. I got up a couple of times to do the laundry and daddy got up a couple of times to make lunch and get snacks and that was about it really. So there, a lazy Sunday before you came along, Mini-N. A most un-befitting type of Sunday to have when a baby comes along.

I suspect, people who reads this has so much to tell us, 1000 ways how our lives will be changed after the baby comes and 1000 things we're doing now that's bad example for the young. Yes, I know, we know... Which is why, I'm writing all these down as a memorabilia now, in case we never get to do this again for the rest of our lives. When you read this further along, Mini-N, you can tell us how we have changed (or have not changed) for the better, we hope.

Mini-N, your daddy can't wait for you to come. He told me he wants to fix up your crib already, just to stare at it. Speedy growth, Mini-N. Love you..