Raising 10

I sprained my back yesterday while bending over and pulling some love grass out of my kid's pants. Yea i know. Doesn't sound as macho as spraining my back doing sport of lifting heavy furniture. So yes....I'm getting old.


Anyway, while resting at home, I was watching Jon & Kate plus 8 on TV. It's a reality show of life family of twins and another set of sextuplets. As the series on TV are pretty old, I decided to google them. Man ...was I disappointed. They're getting divorced.





The Gosselin children have been under the limelight ever since they were young and with their parents splitting up, it's gonna be very tough on the kids. Most kids wouldn't be able to google about the parents and find all the smut and gossip news about their estranged parents. The impressions that they have of their parents will definetely be influenced.


Before finding out about the divorce, I had been talking about the missus about the type of attention or publicity that the kids will get. How their lives would change and their exposed to the media. Not many kids get to see themselves on the television. And having a series shot about your whole like is a totally different ball game. I'm really concerned about the repercussions of the divorce on the kids.


Imagine bringing 8 active, noisy and crying kids to the mall. I need to pee, I'm hungry, Mommy, he touched me, I wanna go home. Now multiply that by 8! As a parent of two, I have really been very impressed by how they raised their 8 children of 2 age groups. And regardless of age, there will be arguments and fights among the kids.


It's just to see such turn of events. And the media's having a field day taking advantage and publicising the incident.

I WANT MOMMY!!!

I WANT MOMMY!!!! I still remember vividly how my youngest daughter wailed and cried as her mommy went into the departure lounge at the airport. As I walked with the girls to the car, I was worried I would be stopped by the police officers on suspicion of kidnapping. We made it all the way to the car, and all the while, Daphne was crying her eyes out. My arms were slightly sore from carrying my struggling and wailing daughter. That was about a year ago.

Few weeks back, we went to the airport again. This time, since she is older, she is more understanding. We didn't go down of the car though as I didn't want to run the risk of exposing the kids to any of the travels who might have H1N1 at the airport, talk about being paranoid. We waited in the car instead as mommy checked in her luggage. As we sat in the car waiting for the time for mommy to board, we had some very good carrot cake from Coffee Bean. Pretty scrumptious I must say.

Fast forward a week, and it was time to pickup mommy from the airport. In the morning, the kids were already reminding me to make sure to bring them along to the airport. As we was early and mommy wasnt due to arrive for more than an hour, I decided to bring the kids to Toys 'R Us. While driving, my eldest turns to me and says, 'Papa. You don't have to buy anymore toys for me. I already have many (toys). You buy one for yourself.'

I really don't know where kids learn to say these things.....reverse psychology springs to mind.