Dear Penny,
I realize that it was this time last year that I last wrote a letter to you. You were then still in your mommy’s stomach and we didn’t know what to call you yet. So we referred to you as “Bump”.
Well Hello PENELOPE ROSE TIAH! Yep that is your name. Although we sometimes refer to you now as Mochi. Why I will explain later on.
You were born in March 2015. The first six months was hard. Medically you were born healthy but within the first couple of months we found out that you had hernia. One of your ovaries had dropped into a gap and you had to undergo surgery to correct it.
You may not have known what was going on then but it was painful for your mom and I. We are big believers in energy though so as much as we were worried and scared, we made sure to be very tough and positive whenever you were around. We wanted to make sure that you knew, that we thought that everything was going to be okay. We didn’t manage to follow through with that commitment though.
On the day of your surgery, we changed you into a surgery gown that was way too big for you and put you on a hospital bed that could’ve fit a proper sized adult. Seeing how small you were in that big bed was a reminder to us about how you were forced to carry the burden of an adult at such a young age.
We followed you as far as we could go into the operating theater and then the nurses stopped us. They said it was time for them to wheel you in on your own. You cried of course because the room was cold and your mom and I watched as the nurses wheeled you away. Yes it was that moment that we lost our commitment to be tough and strong. Your mom turned to me and buried her face in my chest. Both of us cried as mommy said “She’s so small. Why does she have to go through this?”.
The good news is that you recovered from the surgery with no complications and was able to go home and focus on growing like any other baby.
I gotta admit you weren’t an easy baby to take care of though. In the first 6 months you would often get into this unstoppable crying fit. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with you each time. Once when we were in Sydney, you cried for two hours straight in the hotel room while mommy rocked you, fed you, changed your diaper and did everything she could think of to stop.
Your constant crying drove many people up the wall and mommy bore the brunt of it because she spent the most time with you. As frustrated as she was, she never shied away from being there with you. She kept to a commitment of always being the one to put you to sleep and was the one to carry you and feed you every night when you woke up.
I’m telling you this because I think it’s important to know that at a young early age, even when you were really hard to manage, mommy stepped up and made sure she was there for you. She was there for you in your good times when you smiled and laughed and she was there for you in your bad times when you wouldn’t stop crying.
They say teenage girls sometimes don’t get along with their moms. If that turns out to be true one day, I’d like you to read this. To remember how mommy took care of you when you weighed less than 10KG.
As I write this now mommy is just putting up to sleep. You are now 9 months old and you’re a lot easier to take care of now. You have also grown to be one really beautiful baby. While your brother used to get all the attention when we brought the both of you out, you’re now beginning to steal the limelight a little. I think Koko feels it because he then tries to do more to get attention back to him.
We can see a bit more of your personality coming out now. You’re very independent. We can often leave you on your own and you’ll be happy doing your own thing. You are very determined. When you want something you crawl through barricades just to get to it.
Oh and there’s one more thing about you. You are very very close to mommy now. Every time she comes within close proximity of you, you charge for her like life depended on it.
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to see you wide awake. You sleep between Mommy and me on our bed but whenever you’re up you rarely come over to my side. You’re always over at mommy’s side, climbing over her or just sticking to her. Yes sticking. You are so sticky to mommy that we now sometimes refer to you as mochi. Because you’re round and sticky.
I can’t begin to describe how you’ve enriched my life in the past 9 months. I pray to God every night to thank him for you and Fighter. For the joy and for the happiness the both of you bring us.
Love,
Daddy
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space