Auld Lang Syne 2012

Dear Xander,

There’s a whole lot of things you’ve said and done in the three years of your life that we wish we could continue hanging on to. For example, we attempted to make a plaster mould of your foot to remember how tiny you were at 3 months old, but you refused to co-operate for 6 months. We did, however, succeed in using a picture of your 3-month-old sleeping self to recreate an Ip Man movie poster with your name on it, copies of which now hang proudly in our and your respective grandparents’ households.

In fact, part of the reason why you have this blog is so we can document some of these things for remembrance. It’s quite amazing what a 3-year-old can say and do, and many times your mum and I are left wondering where you learnt all of it from. For instance:-

1. When you yawn, your mum and I cannot help but smile, not just because it’s one of the cutest things we get to see on a regular basis, but also because it means half an hour after you do, we finally get to have a few hours of peace.

2. Since you were 3 months old, you have almost always managed to sleep through the night, something your mum and I are told is rare and should should be considered a blessed gift from the heavens, though never to be taken for granted.

3. You have days where you actually volunteer to go to bed.

4. The days that you don’t volunteer, we enlist the help of a hypothetical Mr Thunder to scare you into submission.

5. Back in your old daycare centre at Guillemard – before you turned 2 – you managed to score 3 girlfriends in the span of 5 months, and 2 of them were actually pretty (the 3rd we suspect was trying to force herself on you).

6. In your current daycare centre, you have 1 girlfriend, although your mum and I suspect that this relationship is also not your idea.

7. You either really liked CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case, or you didn’t have a choice because you were 6 months old and were not emotionally or linguistically equipped to protest.

8. You inherited your mother’s patience (none) and my speech habits (loud). You also have a violent streak of which we have yet to determine the source.

9. You never liked eating candy; you liked asking for them, but they wouldn’t stay in your mouth very long. Your liking for chocolate was a rather recent development, though.

10. You have a penchant for secondary underdog characters in movies and television shows (albeit strongly developed ones); your favourite Care Bears are Grumpy and Oopsie, your favorite Cars character is Mater the Tow Truck, in Monsters Inc. it was Mike the one-eyed green thing (I agree; Billy Crystal stole the show), and you named your stuffed Ikea labrador Pluto. On hindsight, you may have subliminally understood that you were named after a secondary character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (we’ll elaborate on that later).

11. When you were 2, you took ownership of the vampire teddy bear your mother bought from a Godiva store in Belgium, and haven’t returned it since.

12. When things don’t go your way, you disavow all like or love for anyone that stand in your way, including your parents. This usually works for you when you’re dealing with your grandparents, but your mum and I never gave you a choice in the matter anyway.

13. Your reply to any “why” question was always “Because” followed by repeating the context of the same question, i.e. “Why you don’t like Daddy?” “Because I don’t like Daddy.”

14. You actually like Teresa Teng songs. For that matter, anything Chinese you see (lion dances, red lanterns, Buddhist temples and pagodas) gets you excited; we would call you a true-blue Chinese boy.

I will endeavor to consolidate an annual list for every New Year, not so much to embarrass you on a publicly accessible forum, but for you to know these are the things your mum and I will remember of you growing up.

And possibly use as reference to explain any future psychological patterns you may develop.

Love, Dad.