My Cute Sleepy Head

BABY Qar is fast asleep, along with the rest of the household except for Nek Yong. At the time of writing this, the time is 2:58 on Sunday morning.

Like every doting grandmother, Nek Yong does a quick check on Qar every hour or so, just in case his little cotton blanket got tangled in his face. Qar wriggles and stretches a lot and when he does his entire small frame gets all twisted and contorted and red. He makes the cutest sound ever when he does his little stretch. It is so adorable that it melts Nek Yong’s heart every time.

Twist and turn and wriggle and stretch but never awake - that's Qar for you.

Qar’s mum and dad are in the bedroom with him but they are fast asleep, trying to recover as much as possible from the maddening event of August 13. So Nek Yong plays Nanny to make sure both parents and child are in good care.

Yesterday, Qar got his very own passport and Nek Yong accompanied him and his parents to the nearby Immigration Office. Nicely wrapped in a bundle, Qar slept through everything, even when Nek Yong placed him in front of the photographer’s camera to get a passport sized photo of him.

At 5pm yesterday, when Nek Yong gave him his bath, his umbilical cord stump finally fell off. It was a big relief for Nek Yong as it was quite unnerving seeing it dangled around Qar’s navel every day. It was especially tough ‘handling’ it during bath time and sterilising it.

Sometimes when Qar ‘yelped’, Nek Yong got worried just in case he was in pain. Of course he wasn’t in pain because the umbilical cord doesn’t have pain-sensitive nerve fibres, according to medical advice. Many of us however think it does.

Perhaps when Nek Yong has the time, I will write a little about this in my post, just to reassure my daughter as she has not been able to Google much of late.

Just slightly a week old, Qar, fast asleep.

Qar has just passed a week old and is already looking like a big boy. He is beginning to smile a lot too. Nek Yong can’t get enough of looking at Qar and cuddling and giving him small kisses on those rosy cheeks of his. My two daughters have a good laugh whenever they see me doing these. They make fun of me, purposely thinking aloud as to where my tough, disciplinarian qualities have gone to since Qar arrived.

Well, laugh all you like, daughters. Tomorrow, I’m taking Qar shopping for his Hari Raya (Eid)’s clothes. So there …

                                                                                               With loving care – Nek Yong