《小白船》

Image taken from www.mamalisa.com/world/halfmoon.html

童谣《小白船》歌词

蓝蓝的天空 银河里
有只小白船
船上有颗桂花树
白兔在游玩
桨儿 桨儿 看不见
船上也没帆
飘呀 飘呀
飘向西天

渡过那条银河水
走向云彩国
走过那个云彩国
再向哪儿去？
在那遥远的地方
闪着金光
晨星是灯塔
照呀 照得亮

《小白船》 (directly translated as 'Little White Boat') is a favourite 儿歌 (children song) of both YL and myself. We found the 《小白船》mp3 on the internet and have been playing it daily, hoping that 乐乐 will like it too... Maybe next time when he cries, we can play this song to soothe his moods! If you can read mandarin, do read through the lyrics and appreciate its beauty... see if you aren't touch by it. :)

For interest, this song originates from Korea, and is called "Pan Tal" in Korean. You can refer to this website for its lyrics. I have reproduced the English translation below:

Half-Moon (English) By Yoon Kuk-Young

In a small, white boat
In the blue sky
Are a cinnamon tree and a rabbit.
Without sail and without oar,
Yet gliding,
Gliding smoothly to a western shore.

Sailing across the Milky Way
To the land of clouds.
Where does it journey
Beyond the land of clouds?
Towards the sparkling reflection
So far away,
To the beacon light of a new dawn.
Now, child, find a road.

If you are interested in more chinese/china 儿歌, look at this website. (Just note that there are some "chinese communist songs" from the Mao era in there!)

On the other hand, if you are interested in more children songs and nursery rhymes from around the world, then check out this website.

Brainstorming - English Names

Following our brainstorming of chinese names, we thought we will also brainstorm on English names for Bambino....

If we really want Bambino to be 小乐乐 (which means "happy"), then the most intuitive name that we could name him would be "Isaac", which means "he laughs"!

A list of the other possible names in which we are open to considering are :

a) Benjamin ("son of My right hand")
b) Jonathan ("God's gift")
c) Dominique ("of God")
d) Christopher ("of Christ")
e) Linus (one of Paul's disciple, mentioned in 2 Timothy Chapter 4.)
f) Peter ("rock")
g) Michael ("warrior")
h) Clement ("liberty"; Paul mentioned him in Philippians 4:3, and said that his name is written in the Book of Life)

Brainstorming...chinese names

Over the weekend, we started to brainstorm about names....actually, more doing that for fun rather than in a hurry to decide on something concrete.

We have actually asked YL's dad to do the honours of naming our son. YL's dad however told YL that as a father, YL himself should have some inputs on the name too, so he told us to come up with some options on the chinese character(s) and then he will work around it and come up with something that everyone will be happy with.

Well, YL wants the child to be a happy one and also to bring joy to people around. So he is now thinking of ending the chinese name with the chinese character 乐 ("Le4" = "happy/joy"). Otherwise, the character 乐 could also serve as the middle one. I.e. Bambino's chinese name could be 林乐XX or 林XX 乐, of which XX is the unknown chinese character to be filled in by YL's dad.

Plus point is that the chinese character 乐 also reads yue4 meaning "music" as in 音乐 and it fits with one of the daddy's hopes for his bambino too (i.e. to be musically-inclined)...

So, for a while, we were thinking of temporarily giving our bambino a 小名 (xiao3 ming2 = little name normally used for a child) called 乐乐 ("Le4 Le4" = "happy happy"), but it sounded strangely familiar. YL then checked up the name on the internet and found out that its the name of one of the giant pandas in the Beijing Zoo!!! Quite funny hor?? :)

But i think we will temporarily still call him 乐乐 lah....hopefully he doesn't come out with two "O Mak Kaks" (black panda eyes)!!

[p/s: We have since been told by friends that the name 乐乐 was also the name of one of the grandson in the Hong Kong TV series called 真情 (Zhen1 Qing2)]

Anyway, choosing a name is such a fun process. But it also reflects so much of what a parent hopes for the child to become. I was telling YL that better not inflate his expectation too much of bambino, lest he grows up to be a stressed-out kid!

We agree that the most important thing that we hope for the child is to be a person of good character, that he is happy and healthy....praying daily that the child will have a good temperament/nature so that he can be a friend to many...

Reminder to Mummy and Bambino to exercise!

Glad to say that i can now feel Bambino's kicks more strongly and frequently!

It actually feels like him blowing bubbles inside. Its probably because he is swimming in a mess of fluid, so his action really does create some sort of hydro-movements within the womb! Earlier on, the "bubbling feeling" felt very tiny and subtle, but now they are a lot more frequent and there's a lot more force in them too...

Haha, maybe yesterday's scan and all that probing was a "wake-up call" for him.

Hey Bambino, you must exercise more ok? Don't be like your lazy mummy!!

Anyway, I came across some rather interesting sponsored free web-videos entitled "Yoga for your pregnancy". I think they teach you 15 yoga moves. One just have to endure the half a minute commercial before you get a detailed demo of each move.

My opinion on them? I actually found them to be pretty interesting. If you ignore the "meditation part", they are actually just a series of stretches to strengthen the pregnant body, so that one is stronger when the time of labour comes. I quite like some of the moves like the "butterfly pose" and of course the one on "final relaxation"!! On the other hand, some of the moves look pretty difficult to manage, such as the "camel pose", the "tree pose", the "cat pose" and the "downward dog pose".

Yes, i know, I did have quite a laugh over the names of these moves! :)

21 week scan - Its a BAMBINO (little BOY!)

We just had our 21 weeks ultrasound scan today...Praise God that everything is very normal so far...!

Although I can't really feel his movements yet (i think i am either really dense, or according to my mum, i am too active and therefore not very sensitive to his movements), he has shown himself to be very active during the scan (he was fidgeting all throughout it)!

"Clearly a BOY", according to the ultrasound lady and YL who were both very quick at pointing out in unison that they not only saw his penis but also had a clear view of his scrotum too [hope am not overdosing u with details!]! He yawned at the end of the scan as i think he was getting bored with all that poking from the ultrasound... =)

The baby is currently lying head down and bottom up, and his back is against my tummy. He currently measures 20cm from head to butt...You can see from the photos below that his facial features (nose, lips, etc.) are already very well formed... =)



Such well-formed lips and nose...I think he's got YL's pointed nose... :)


See his feet stretching!!


His face! OK, I admit that I've added some drawings to facilitate the deciphering of the various features...

Although he indicated no real preference at first, YL is clearly delighted that we are expecting a boy. He says that he can now share all his toys (his flight simulator, electric guitar, etc...) with his bambino! When he told his parents about the news, his family said they would be happy either way and even jokingly teased him for being "Zhong4 Nan2 Qing1 Nu3"! He explained that because he himself was the eldest boy at home, he had hoped that he would have a son as a first child too, so that next time the big brother can take care of the little siblings... !

What about me? I would have been pleased eitherway. Its just that being practical, now i know for sure that any baby stuffs that we purchase should be in shades of boyish blue rather than pretty pink! But more importantly, am really thankful that the scan has shown the baby to be healthy. Things like that cannot be taken for granted, so we will continue to pray that Bambino grows up strong and well! :)

Dear dear Bambino...we are so looking forward to seeing you in 4 months time! :)

21st week - More than halfway through!!

"Yay, we're more than half way through!!
Wonder if you are a boy or a girl?
Well, we'll find out soon, won't we?"

:)

London bombs!

This is not directly related to Bambini. However, its just too BIG a thing not to record in our blog.

Many of our friends have earlier emailed, smsed or called us to check if we were alright. Just want to give thanks to God that both of us are indeed safe and sound and not very affected by the series of explosions in London earlier this morning (London time).

YL was going to take the underground tube to school at 9am. A train had arrived and he was about to board it when there was a message from the PA system to say that they are shutting down the whole underground service and the station itself, because there was a series of incidents. He tried another nearby tube station but it was the same and he even saw explosive experts patrolling the area.

At that time, I was surfing the internet and there was newsflash about the blasts in London. We were horrified to hear of so many explosions throughout central london business area. The images, statistics and reports that were coming through the tv and internet gave us shivers. One double-decker bus was ripped apart by a bomb, one bomb exploded in a litter bin and there were several explosions in the various underground tube lines. A lot of the less injured commuters came out of the tube visibly shaken with a lot of soot on their faces...

We were just glued to the tv and everything appeared so surreal. You see, just a couple of months ago, there was a docu-fictional show that was staged to show how London might respond to a similar attack...My mind was going, "is this for real or is it just another drill"??

We continued to monitor the situation from home via tv news and internet. Thank God we are staying just outside central london, and are therefore relatively unaffected. We had also found out that all our friends and colleagues in London were physically unaffected by the incidents. However, we still felt rather upset.If this was one year ago, I might have been affected, as I would have been travelling down to school to write my MSc thesis in one of the school libraries near Russell Square tube station (one of the station that had been affected by the blast). And the timing of the blast might have well affected me as that would have been my travelling time!! Thoughts like these made us feel really thankful for just being alive.

We're really touched when we received so many smses, emails and telephone calls from friends and families to check if we are alright. We need to continue to pray that the situation will become much better for those Londoners and tourists who are caught in the blast and that there would be as few fatalities as possible and a sense of normality restored to London soon. In a way, London has subconciously become our "second" home, and it just distress us to think of what the families and friends of those who were injured or worse, killed, in this senseless incident must be going through now...

Its strange that just yesterday, the whole of London was celebrating how they have clinched the honour to host the Olympics in 2012. Today, the sense of jubilation has suddenly been replaced by such tragedy and confusion...

Life is totally unpredictable. We all need to cherish TODAY.