Nina drew this last week. It’s a drawing of our family. Notice the slanted mouths? Her mommy just had a surgery that affected the nerves that control the facial expression. She can’t smile properly yet. One side is lower that the other. It will take up to 3 months for full recovery. So Nina decided to draw the mouth of the other family members that way too. 

Also note that she drew uncle Franky (second from left) with his tongue out because uncle Franky likes to tease Nina whenever we visit them in Jakarta. So, she drew him as if he was teasing her.

Nina: “Daddy, when you and mommy have not got married yet and are still friends, are you shy to take off your underpants in front of mommy?”

I was smiling and speechless in the beginning. I was caught off guard by this question, but then quickly answered:

Daddy: “No Nina, we cannot take off our underpants if we are not married yet”

I know that this answer is not really complete, but I hope to give her the idea and basic value around this topic. I know that more related questions may come soon and I’d better be prepared with good answers. Kids these days learn and hear so much that we as parents need to equip ourselves quickly with knowledge on how to handle these sensitive questions. Nina is only 5 now. At her age, I probably only thought of sweets.

Time to read more about this S . E . X education for children from the expert.

Nina has been sleeping without diapers with success for 6 consecutive days now. Hopefully this will continue. Her mommy would wake her up at around 2.30am and 6am to get her to the bathroom and then back to sleep. It has been successful so far, but poor her mommy that she had difficulty going back to sleep sometimes.

I have written before that Nina needs her mommy’s hair when sleeping. She needs to play and smell her mommy’s hair before she can finally sleep. Not sure how long this will continue. So I told her just now to learn to sleep without her mommy’s hair and she commented:

“Daddy, I need to learn new things one by one. Not two by two. I now learn not to wee wee on the bed. Later I will learn not to play with mommy’s hair. “

I got the point, Nina. 

We all know that time flies and things change, but many times, we don’t realize what we are missing until it’s too late. Am I making any sense here?

OK, what I am going to write is not that bad, but I have started to feel that I am going to “lose” my little girl very soon. Nina is growing up fast. She is capable of doing many things by herself now. Things that she probably never thought of when she was a baby or as a 1 year old girl. She has lost a lot of her toddler’s way of saying something or pronouncing words. There are still some words that she can’t pronounced correctly yet, such as the following Indonesian words:

• hudah instead of sudah
• yuga instead of juga
• and some more. I will update the list when I remember them

She is also still confused sometimes between “ask” (as in asking question) and “tell” (as in telling someone something). But, I am sure all these will change soon.

I went to her bedroom just now and saw her reading her book and we had this short conversation.

Daddy: “Nina, do you want Daddy to read for you?.”
Nina: “No, Daddy. I can read by myself now.”

I am happy that she is now able to read by herself. She is still making some mistakes when reading, but at least she wants to and can try reading by herself. The other day, her mommy told me that Nina read some children story books by herself. You know those children books with lots of pictures and some short sentences.

I have read for her many times before (not as frequent as her mommy did though), so when I saw reading by herself, I thought of asking if she wanted me to read for her.

Daddy: “But Daddy wants to read for you, Nina.”
Nina: “It’s okay, Daddy. I can ready by myself.”

Again, I am happy that she can now read. But, deep inside me, I have this fear of “loosing” her very soon. She may not want to play those “silly” things we used to play together anymore, even if I want to play with her. By the way, they are definitely not silly for her age. Remember what Walt Streightiff said, “There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million”. Things that we think are silly as an adult, are not that silly for them. They are fun and interesting things to play for them. The children probably don’t understand why we adults need to spend lots of time in front of our computer, trying to tell the world our status of the hour: “I never really learned the difference between what is right or wrong. That’s why I automatically assume that whatever I say MUST be right.”

That was never on my facebook status by the way .. … I just picked it up from internet.  

So, I know that I can’t keep her that small forever. I know that I can’t stop her educational growth, otherwise we won’t send her to school. But I know that I have to spend more time enjoying this very moment with her now. Tomorrow is not good enough.

We are happy she is growing up well and healthily.

And oh by the way, she may not understand all the words yet, but she can now say the prayers of “Our Father” or “The Lord’s Prayer” and “Hail Mary” everyday completely without looking at her small prayer book. We are so proud of you, Nina.

Love you pumpkin!

Nina just slept when I went into her room just now. She was woken up when I kissed her and she said:

“Nina dreaming sampai ngeces”

What did you dream about Nina?  

Good night, pumpkin ! Love you.

Nina arranged these flowers that we picked this morning for her mommy. I gave her a small vase that we bought from Ikea long time ago (used to be for cactus) and she arranged the flowers in it. It brightened her mommy’s day, I hope.

We went to the church early this morning. It was still early for Nina and we had to wake her up and didn’t get a chance to have breakfast before we left home. During the mass, she complained that she was hungry, but unfortunately we did not bring her food. She had to stay till the end. During the Communion, her mommy brought her to the front. Her mommy received the Communion and Nina was given the sign of the cross on her forehead as it’s not time yet for her to receive the Communion. She then complained to her mommy:

“Mommy, I want the bread too. I am hungry!”

Nina wanted to have her weekly planner written on paper for her to display on her bedroom wall. She asked her mommy for some help on how to do it. Her mommy drew a table that has days in the vertical columns and time in the horizontal rows. Nina then tried to follow that and the above was what she came up with. Not too bad for her first try. 

Nina lost her second baby tooth in Jakarta on 11 June 2010. We brought the tooth back to Singapore and kept it under her pillow two days ago for the tooth fairy. And of course, Nina got some shiny coins in the morning from the tooth fairy (aka Daddy). She then drew this for the fairy and kept it under her pillow last night. The fairy came to collect it, scan it and post it on this website. Cool fairy huh?  :)

Nina had lost her second baby tooth. It happened when she was in Jakarta on Friday, 11 June 2010. She was brushing her teeth when that happened. The new tooth had already erupted just behind it few weeks ago.

About a week ago, Nina was playing in our bedroom and she accidentally hit the Sleep button of our Alarm Clock that has a radio function too. She suddenly ran out of the room to find her mommy and said this:

Nina: “Mommy, mommy … I pressed Daddy’s alarm clock and then somebody is talking”

We were laughing as it’s just too funny. What happened was when Nina pressed that Sleep button, the radio function got activated and she thought somebody inside the alarm clock was talking. 

A happy family is an earlier heaven, isn’t it?

Nina drew this last week, a drawing of us as a happy family. She did ask me how to spell ‘happy family’ as she wasn’t that sure. We all wear our favorite color, or rather the colors that Nina gave to us as our favorite colors. Since she was around 2 years+, she has said that blue is my favorite color, red is mommy’s favorite color and green is her favorite color. It’s an order from the little one to like the color she has chosen for us.

The big black dot on the right side of the sun’s face is actually the sun’s sweat. The sun was sweating, Nina said. 

Nina drew this for her mommy today. I asked her if she would draw for me today.

Nina: “but daddy, today is not a Father’s Day yet”
Daddy: “but today is not a Mother’s Day. Why did you draw for mommy?”
Nina: “but it’s still May right? Father’s Day is in June”
Daddy: “OK Nina”

I will see if I will get a drawing from Nina everyday in June. 

Dear Nina,

It’s been almost a month since my last letter for you here. So I thought of writing another one now.

Before I forget, you have 19 baby teeth and 1 permanent tooth that erupted few weeks ago. You have lost one baby tooth and it had been taken away by a tooth fairy (aka Daddy) who had exchanged it with six shiny coins under your pillow. This tooth fairy business is getting worrying. I need to prepare 114 shiny coins for all your 19 baby teeth now. I should have started with only 1 coin.

On the education front, you are now having two enrichment classes. Chinese class every Saturday noon and the ballet class every Sunday noon. We signed you up for the Chinese class because both your Daddy and Mommy are useless in Chinese language. We should also attend the class ourselves I think. We signed you up for the ballet class because you have always wanted it so much even since our days in Manila between 2006 to 2008. Every now and then you would ask to wear your tutu inside our apartment even though you were just watching TV. Remember that? And we thought it’s good for you to have more friends outside of your school and at the same time to exercise during the ballet class.

But most importantly, we want you to have the most important enrichment class, which is to learn about basic courtesy, to smile and to love. We are teaching you this ourselves. Life is not all about competition that you can do this, you can do that, you attend this class, you attend that class, you need to be better than your friends and need to be always number 1 in everything. While I understand that life is tough and you need to have the ability to be competitive and to have a good sense of survival during tough times, life is also about smiling, loving and being courteous.

No matter how tough your day has been, you have no right not to smile at other people, especially when they smile at you. You have no right not to be courteous. Smiling is the cheapest way to make yourself look good. Forget about plastic surgery.

Learning how to smile, to be courteous and to show your love for others is as important as, if not more important than, the other enrichment classes you are attending. It will take you far and it will certainly make you a better person. Remember that.

Love,
Your Daddy

Even though I have been blogging about Nina’s diary for five years and have some of her statistics and other info here, I love this new idea that I just discovered last week. I first saw it here at http://www.motherinc.org/ and Daphne, the blogger at MotherInc told me that she got the idea from http://www.smonkyou.com/, a dad blogger like me. Thanks guys for the idea.