Start of the new year

Season's greetings! I thought it would be a good start to the new year to dedicate this post to my family and what i'm thankful for.

One of the most significant events of 2010 (and also of my life) was the birth of our daughter. She is really the light of our lives and brings us plenty of joy daily. It has been kind of a rollercoaster ride, but most of it has been taking place above the clouds so parenthood has definitely given us more smiles and laughters. Overall, we have changed, along with our priorities, for the better (i hope) and find it amusing that both the wifely-person and I are quite self-conscious as we seem to be constantly asking ourselves: "is growing and learning well?", "is she eating enough?", "are we spoiling her?". I guess we just want to be good parents and provide her the best without producing a brat, which is a difficult balancing act, but we'll try.

Recently had a New Year's day party at our place with both sets of grandparents in attendance. Mother-in-law prepared a turkey while my mum prepared the veges and it was a grand old time at home, especially with our daughter being very happy the entire night. I put it down to having her favourite people all under one roof, like playing futsal at East Coast with one's soccer heros i guess. LOL

One of the remarks made at the party inspired this post, as my father-in-law said during his time, his memory and enjoyment of watching his daughters grow up while infants were limited to ferrying them around and watching them sleep at night. This was common among our parents' generation as they all came from relatively big families (more than 6) so their parents could not help with their grandkids the way our parents could. So they had to hire babysitters and nannys in order to cope with making a living at the same time. These days, we are blessed and I am always grateful as we have my in-laws helping to take care of her during the weekdays, ensuring that she is well fed, well taken care of, and well watched over. If that's not enough, they also cook dinner for us. I guess with the changing times, the makeup of the family is evolving and so we have smaller nucleus families but closer core family ties, and for this i am thankful. I only hope that one day when our daughter grows up, she looks back and is just as thankful for all this as I am now.

Have a great 2011!