ALWAYS BE MY BABY

Everdearest Nunu,

This birthday dedication has been sitting in draft mode for more than 2 weeks, and all it had in the beginning was your photos, coz each time I tried to write something for you in this missive as a remembrance that 3 years has passed since we welcomed you into this world, I break into tiny little pieces of emotive sap.

Also responsible for the blogging absence is the dreadful blogger's block. That, and I felt that there aren't enough words that I can search in my mind right now to articulate what it has been like to have you since 3 years ago.

So what I did was to go through some photos and blogs posts of your earlier years, and child, have you grown! You were so tiny then, and dainty and funny looking. It's such a delight that recently that upon request, you could get into character and act like a little baby again. You would snuggle in my arms, flail your arms and make squealing sounds as a baby would. You have no idea how warm and loved that makes me feel, that no matter what age you are, you'll always be my baby.

I thought that I'll never see your face when you were a baby ever again. We never had pictures of you within minutes you came to this world, snapshots of you coming out of me covered in blood and birth slime like most of the babies of your era. Clearly cameras were not permitted in that hospital, so we had to sneak around. When the nurses weren't looking, I snapped endless photos of you, but somehow there was some damage on the digicam and I lost all your infant photos, except for this miserable one which was on your father's handphone. You were just a few hours old when he took that photo. Then we never got around to transferring that precious photo to somewhere more secure or getting it printed. Not only was the phone blue-toothless, it couldn't send pic messages even. And I almost lost my mind when your father sold his handphone to his friend, Uncle Ikhwan, and I thought, there goes the only memory of your infant face, gone forever.

But I was wrong. I've forgotten that Uncle Ikhwan adores you so much, just as much as you are fond of him, so he kept that photo of you in that phone. I've never seen that photo again, until recently, when Uncle Ikhwan finally figured out how to send out MMSes with that phone!

So, we finally have that precious photo now. The baby you.

~just hours old, smelling like heaven~