Our First Family Christmas!

Madison's first holiday season is coming to an end!

This year is the first of many to come of presents, trees and gift giving for our little girl ( she's hardly a baby anymore! )

Madison has been rather taken by the Christmas trees that dot our path wherever we go for the past month. The ones with the most shiny baubles and lights draw her attention the most and she definitely recognises the word " Christmas tree ".

We've never had a tree in our little apartment, mostly because of space constraints, but in view of our little girl I especially went out to Taka to get one, decorated it with the help of Maria and Nancy. The effort seems well worth it, it's been priceless seeing her face light up whenever we turn on the Christmas lights! She seems to favour the shiny silver baubles and would pick them off the lowest branches of the tree.

Of course Madison received her share of presents this year from various people. Pa gave her a mini pink laptop, complete with a mouse! She got Nike sandals from Chris and me, fake Chanel ballet slippers courtesy of Uncle Chai and his frequent visits to Han Ting! Geok and Munhon bought her a shiny Neoprene swimming suit. Chris' mum bought her a belated pressie from Gap-- a new wardrobe for the new year!

We stayed over at the Novena house on Christmas eve so that we could have a long sit down dinner. There was home made turkey, salad, scallops and prawns. For dessert Pa tried to make chocolate souffle but that didn't turn out so well. There was B & J's ice cream courtesy of Ma and marbled banana cake courtesy of Mummy ( chris' mum ).

Prof Foo Chee Liam and his wife, as well as uncle Poh Seong joined in the dinner as well, so you can imagine the crowd at our dinner table... it was tight but really cosy and we all had fun that night.

The only downside to the entire event was the night.. Chris and I spent it at the Novena house but since Chai and his mum were occupying the other spare rooms, Madison took the last remaining one and we crashed on the floor in the study.Did we wake with a sore back and stiff neck the next day!

Crazy days..

I can't believe the year is almost done... I started it thinking about nothing but the baby, the pregnancy and delivery, and now that seems eons away... like a lifetime ago. Life before Madison is becoming a distant memory now, and every day it seems more normal to share my life with her... so cliched!

Updates...

Madison can now crawl too well and she's all over the place. Although I must add that she seems pretty smart for her little pants, and tends to choose the surfaces that she will crawl on quite often. I suppose the cold granite floor is a little uncomfortable to be crawling on for prolonged periods. She also has preferences for the usual places: kitchen, living room, any area COVERED in hazardous things such as electrical wires and white goods! When she comes to a step, our smarty pants of a girl has figured out how to maneouvre it by going leg first then hands!

She can also pull to stand really well now and uses that to her advantage to pull things off shelves and any flat surfaces. Today she was holding a plastic light bulb cover and forgot to hold on, so she actually managed to stand unaided for a split second!

Madison is quite developed in her social domains, and has been able to wave bye bye for awhile now, as well as mimic the twinkle little star act. She of course enjoys peek a boo and laughs at silly things that we do to her.

Fortunately for the past few nights she has been settling well at night so I finally get some well deserved rest at night. Her day time naps are down to 3 as well, morning one at around 9Am, an afternoon one at 130PM and a late one at around 430 0r 5PM so that she would last past dinner. I tried to eliminate that one but it was disastrous... she was so exhausted by dinner and fell asleep before bedtime!

Just when I thought things were settling down for the good... Chris develops optic neuritis...

It occured about a week or two ago right out of the blue. He suddenly started complaining of eye pain, although there was nothing much to see externally. After a week I told him to get it seen by the eye doctors, so he did, and they did not come up with a diagnosis. Saturday, 6th December he started getting fuzzy vision, which did not improve over the weekend.

Monday was a public holiday, so we left it alone but I told him to get a opthalmologist to see it on Tuesday at work. Finally the diagnosis of optic neuritis was made and he had to get urgent tests done that night. The MRI of brain and orbit were done and seemed ok but the opthalmologist seemed to think the optic nerves looked inflamed on the scans. Chris was admitted that night for further blood tests and to start intravenous methylprednisolone to arrest the visual loss.

Wednesday was a really stressful day for me. Initially I had to go to the clinic to review my patient that I intended to SEND to the hospital ANYWAY, but in the end there was a communication error and the message was that she'd already gone, so I didn't go there but headed to SGH in the morning. Then while I was there Jolene called to say that she hadn't gone but had come to the clinic instead! I had to tell her to call the family to send her to the hospital to get checked.

By 11 am Chris still had not seen the neurologist and was still waiting to do some visual testing. I took Madison home for her lunch and afternoon nap. As soon as she fell asleep I packed up some lunch and soup for Chris and headed back to the hospital. Fortunately Zhou Hong was around SGH that day for a lecture so we went down to Delifrance for drinks.

It is good to have friends in different specialities in the medical faculty. Zhou Hong and Melvin helped us look at the MRI scans, while Wan Xian's hubby, who is a neurologist spoke to me more about optic neuritis and multiple sclerosis. In the end while the information wasn't new it still helped to kn0w that there were people out there who cared enough to respond.

Pa and Ma also returned from the annual Hainan mission trip that I missed this year. Ma called me as soon as she landed in Singapore... and terrible me... all I said was... you guys are late! She didn't berate me but just asked how Chris was... Of course I felt really bad afterwards.. it wasn't her fault the plane was late!

All I really want this Christmas is for Chris to be healthy and live LONGER than me! I think I can cope with most things otherwise...