How do you measure a year?

365 days? 365 and 1/4 days? 52 weeks? In terms of hours, minutes and seconds? In terms of the joy and sadness, ups and downs, that you went through?

A year ago, I was experiencing labour contractions for the first time in my life, although it was my second baby. I never expected it to feel like THAT. And of course I'd hoped and hoped that it wouldn't end like THIS. But the outcome was positive for both of us, mother and baby.

I'd dreamed of my baby all through my pregnancy. Sometimes, it was a girl. Sometimes, it was a boy. And other times, I didn't know the gender! But when I asked my husband, is it a boy or a girl, in the OT, he took a look, smiled a sheepish smile, and said, BOY.

And Reuvel was here to stay.

I am the Prince of Mischief

Hello again everybody,

Today I want to tell you about my pastimes. You must be very surprised - wow, I have pastimes at 11mths of age? Why yes!

One of my favs is crawling over to the clothes bureau, pulling the bottom drawer out (I'd do the higher ones if I can reach them), and throwing ALL the neatly folded clothes inside (my jiejie's) onto the floor. I pretend I'm digging for buried treasure. But I absolutely detest it when Mom and Jiejie start shouting, "No Ruvie don't!" and rush over to erase all my efforts. They usually barr me from opening the drawer again. Hey! How am I supposed to find any treasure?

As a variation, I sometimes try to pull and throw piles of neatly folded laundry which Mom or Dad has stacked up on the foam mats, so they have to fold the laundry again. I am of the opinion that they don't have enough work to do, so I generally sneak up when they are absorbed in watching TV.

Let's see... What else do I like to do? Ah yes, recently I have taken to playing with the shoes which are placed next to the front door. After handling them all over, I sometimes chew on them a bit. Everybody else seems to see something wrong with this, because as soon as they see me doing it they'll come over and take me away. And Mom calls me a puppy. Why?

And I dunno why, but these days, when we're home, I don't like to go when Mom brings me to the toilet or potty, even if I know I need to go. However, after she gives up and leaves me be, I will do a huge pee or poo and Mom will have to clean me and it up. Perhaps it's because I'm crawling now and learning more and more things everyday so I can't be bothered to do little things like pottying. Just today, I did a huge poo right next to the potty in the STUDY and was playing with it when Mom returned from the kitchen. She went up in smoke of course, but couldn't be angry with me for more than 1 second.

But although I create a lot of chaos for Mom, I know that she is very glad that I can now hold my pee all through the night till the next morning. I am also happy that Mom can now sleep more and better at night because of this.

I wonder what else I can cook up tomorrow...

Two Milkies Are Better Than One

Hi everybody,

My name is Ruvie. I am 11mo now, and I will be 1yo soon. Wow! I can't believe I've already been in this world for almost a year now, and I've learnt a lot about the people around me.

For example, last month, I learnt that my mommy has TWO milkies, yay! In the past, I usually had "milky", and I didn't understand why sometimes I had to close my left eye, and sometimes I had to close my right. But one day, when Mom was lying down flat on the bed, I crawled over to latch on to "milky", and then hey! I could see another!

Immediately I let go and moved to "um" the other one, and then hey! There's the first one again, peeping at me! So I let go to go back to the other one, and so on and so forth, causing my mommy lots of anguish because I had let go in the middle of a letdown and milk was spraying all over my face and wetting mom's bed.

Oh well. I LURRRVE MILKY!!!