Day One: Arrival, Bugis Street, & Clark Quay

We sleep in today then head to the Concierge to pick up a map & some tips about navigating through Singapore. Everyone tells us to take a cab wherever we're going. They just can't fathom walking through the city with a stroller & a baby. Plus, the air outside is muggy & the roads a little confusing.

We decide to walk to Bugis Street, a shopping area visited by the locals. No name brands, just lots of little stalls & covered alleyways, very must like the LA Fashion District, but covered like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. En route we encounter our first obstacle when we exit the hotel & try to cross a street that is fenced off. There aren't any pedestrian crosswalks at the intersection, but there is a pedestrian overpass. Sweaty & smelling ourselves, we almost resort to hailing cab, but instead we lug the stroller up the flight of stairs, push it across the overpass, then carry it down the stairs.

Bugis Street is worth visiting. There are lots of stalls selling women's clothing, but we're hoping to explore and find more the next time we visit. All the women in the stalls would gasp & smile at Atticus. Singaporeans love babies and children. It's wonderful to see how easy they are interacting with Atticus. We haven't seen many babies around at all. Where are they?

We leave Bugis Street and happen upon Illumina, a shopping mall next door. We change a diaper, lug the stroller + baby upstairs to the arcade, then back down to another overpass to Bugis Junction, a covered outdoor shopping center.

Malls are everywhere in Singapore. A mall is attached to every subway station. They are adjacent and connected to one another, so it's easy to get from one to another without stepping outside. Shopping is a common Singaporean pastime. Plus, many restaurants reside in these malls, so many people come to malls to eat. The price of clothing is pretty reasonable too. I see lots of signs for 50% off and $10 t-shirts.

After a 3-hour nap in the hotel room, we head back out to Clark Quay (pronounced "key"), where many touristy restaurants line the waterfront. We are looking for a restaurant called Coriander Leaf, which is recommended by the Lonely Planet guidebook. Oh, that is mistake #1. The guidebook claims that entrees are $15-20, but we find out that they are $30-35, out of our price range. We're looking for cheap, good food, not fake fusion & pretentious ambiance. We get enough of that (fake fusion & pretentious ambiance) in Los Angeles. We wander around Clark Quay some more. See some single women walking about & wonder if they are prostitutes. Watch people watching the Portugal vs. North Korea World Cup game. Walk by a fancy Burger King with a bar. Finally, Joe calls & we catch a cab back to the Marina Square shopping mall. We walk around a bit, all three of us starving. We notice that the few Chinese restaurants are busy & filled with Chinese people, while the Thai restaurant & noodle shop are empty. The sushi restaurant is empty too except a few tourist families.

We meet Joe at a seafood restaurant called Fin. I order a soft shell crab over baked rice (with cheese) & Robby orders a pan-fried fish. Pretty good, though not so impressive that we would return. The food is certainly displayed well & tastes hearty, but it's nothing unusual. Worth $15? We're not sure.

What we're looking forward to the most in Singapore are the hawker food stalls & the Night Zoo. We have to go to Chinatown, Little India & Kampong Glam (Arab Street) for the good food, we think.

We go to bed at 11pm, but Atticus wakes up at 2am & doesn't get back to sleep until 4:30am. His body is still on Pacific Standard Time. Then we wake up a 6am, go down for breakfast, & Atticus & I send Robby off to his all-day consortium workshop. Oops, I'm already into Day 2!

En Route to Singapore

Our flight to Singapore was long & tiring but luckily uneventful.

We left LAX at 3pm, & armed with 2 bottles of breast milk, 3 changes of clothing, and 16 diapers, we boarded Singapore Airlines flight SQ 11 to Singapore with an hours layover in Tokyo at Narita Airport. We were fortunate to book early enough to reserve bulkhead seats, & the flight attendants set up a small bassinet against the wall under the projector screen. There were 9 other babies on board with bassinet, & not everyone with babies were able to receive one. Most of the families were either Japanese, Chinese, or Indian. We got some shifty looks from the older Indian couples & some polite little nods from the Japanese couples. The flight attendants were very helpful with warming up bottles & serving meals at our convenience. The female flight attendants were especially friendly with Atticus.

Baby Boy was extremely well-behaved on the entire flight. The most difficult moment was the descent into Narita Airport, when he was crying for milk & his ears were probably plugged like mine. I had never felt so much pain from plugged ears before - it was pretty annoying, especially since the descent lasted so long.

The flight from LAX to Narita Airport was 10 hours, then another 6 hours to Singapore. Total travel time was 23 hours. We emerged from the plane & arrived to Singapore exhausted & disheveled but excited. We checked into the Pan-Pacific Hotel at 1am.

The Pan-Pacific is the most luxurious hotel we've ever stayed...bell hops, elevators lined with white lights, modern-looking furniture in the enormous lobby, king-sized bed...wow! & we're very close to Robby's conference at the Sun-Tec Convention Centre. We were even provided a little wooden crib for Atticus to sleep in. & we have a balcony with a chaise lounge chair & a view of the Esplanade & Marina Casino.


This is the interior of our hotel.

Breakfast the same morning was a gigantic buffet filled with different kinds of foods - Shanghainese dimsum (lobster dumplings), Singaporean noodles, fresh fruit juices, freshly made noodle soup, brioche & green tea donuts, rice porridge (they call it "congee" here), & the regular American stuff, like pancakes, waffles, & bagels. It's quite a spread. I paced myself & felt sufficiently full after trying a few things, but Robby ate himself silly & felt sick afterwards.

We're living large in Singapore. We figured we should not skimp on our lodgings with a baby on our hands.

What to Bring with Baby

Babies travel with a lot of stuff. Somehow, I managed to fit both Atticus and my belongings in a roller carry-on, but Robby also packed some of Atticus's things in his bag. I didn't want to be a neurotic, over-prepared parent, but I didn't want to have to buy too many baby items in Singapore either.

Here is a laundry list of baby things we brought:

- 106 diapers (He uses 10-12/day, so this was plenty for our 7-day trip. I brought 16 diapers on our 16-hour flight [though it was 23 hours including waiting at the airports], but he only used about 5.)
- a package of diaper wipes
- 2 glass bottles to drink from
- 3 plastic bottles to store milk (I haven't used them yet)
- two hand pumps (one is still unused)
- bottle brush & small sponge for washing bottles
- receiving blankets
- diaper cloths
- a few muslin wraps (good for multiple uses, like blocking out sunlight, swaddling, covering, etc.)
- burp cloths
- one swaddle
- 8 onesies (very useful in this hot climate)
- 4 sleepers (We heard that the indoors can get very cold)
- 2 long-sleeved onesies
- 3 pairs of pants
- 15 bibs (Very useful because he drools a lot, sometimes so much that his onesie underneath is soaked)
- 4 pacifiers
- a lovie (A small, soft blanket with a hippo's head attached to one corner. This is used for bedtime snuggling.)
- diaper cream
- baby powder
- baby soap
- baby blanket
- nail clippers
- baby Benadryl
- baby Tylenol
- thermometer
- baby sunblock (Oops, we forgot this at home!)
- nursing apron
- stroller
- infant car seat (just so we have a place to put him)
- diaper bag

Don't babies come with a lot of stuff?

Closing and Beginning

Tonight I finished my last class of Research and Practice in the Preparation of Teachers at USC. I presented twice tonight & turned in my final paper on multicultural teacher education.

In a few weeks, I start a statistics course for another 6 weeks...

Atticus turns 4 months on Monday. He has changed a lot from 3 to 4 months. He is more deliberate in his behavior - not that he is manipulative or deceptive, but he knows that crying will elicit a response from us. He had a mild case of thrush a few weeks ago, & I'm hoping the white spots on his tongue are not residual signs of that. He loves to feel the texture of things, and he is more deliberate in the motor skills in his hands. He'll lie under the play mat and gingerly tap the hanging animals. Pretty soon, he'll be tugging on them! He also likes to hold our hands when we put him to bed. Sometimes he will put my hand against his face. He also does this with his lovie (a little blanket with a stuffed animal head attached to one corner).

Atticus has decidedly chosen bottle over breast, which saddens & frustrates me. I'm tired of pumping and washing bottles constantly. I've been told that it's very difficult to coax a 4-month-old baby back to the breast. I should be ashamed of myself. I haven't been working, so he shouldn't have been using bottles in the first place.

We're flying to Singapore in a few days, so Atticus's determination to refuse the breast makes our lives more tedious. We'll just have to manage.

Last night, we sat him in the Bumbo chair for the first time & fed him rice cereal. He seemed to like the spoon. We'll try to make a habit out of feeding him rice cereal now.

Oh, & Atticus now laugh WITH us. If he's in a good mood, he will laugh in short bursts without having been tickled. We love it. We can't get enough of his noises, except crying.

I'll be teaching at a public charter school in South Central Los Angeles this fall. I'm very excited. More to come later...

Robby's gift to Atticus & his future siblings

Robby just completed a rap video for our son Atticus & any future baby(ies). It is called the "The 10 Kid Commandments", & it's based on Biggie's song "Ten Crack Commandments." Instead of Biggie's 10 lessons about dealing crack, Robby's songs consists of 10 life lessons.

Please watch the video on Atticus's website. The website includes the lyrics.

Or, you can watch it here:



Enjoy!

Okay, I was wrong...

Atticus does not begin talking after we stop talking.

When I read to him, he loves talking over my voice. He doesn't respond to the words, but he loves the pictures.

We've also found that Atticus likes to watch television. Oh oh. He takes after his mother. We don't own a television, so when he spots one, he is completely mesmerized.

Pardon me, but we've got a baby with manners...

Continuing with his discovery of his hands, Atticus now prefers sucking on his fist instead of his chuppie, what our neighbor calls pacifier (It's Spanish & such a cute word that I have to start using it). He sticks about half of it into his little mouth and slowly gnaws. At first, watching him do this is a little disconcerting because he looks like he is trying to stuff his entire fist into his mouth. But, no, he is just looking to suckle.

Robby & I have also caught him staring as his hand as he touches the wall next to the changing pad. He also tends to touch the bottoms of his feet together when we change his diaper.

Atticus also pays more attention when I read to him. I like to read to him in bed because he'll often fall asleep after a few board books. Yesterday, as I reached the end of The Hungry Caterpillar, he started jabbering away. I put the book down, gave him a kiss, & got out of bed as he stared out of the window. When I returned 5 minutes later, he was fast asleep. This boy loves naps.

Best of all, our boy has manners! Robby remarked on Atticus polite demeanor last night when he described their conversation: "He always waits for you to stop talking before he starts. Did you notice that?" This is how we're able to converse with Atticus; we talk back and forth. He doesn't always emit sound, but he tries. Who knew he'd turn out so polite?!