Category: My Boys

• 13 weeks

  Dear boys,

  You turned 13 weeks last Friday.

  It was also the first day both of you made eye contact, acknowledged, and talked to one another!

  You were held over our shoulders (both of you like being carried this way, allowing you to survey the land from high above ground, in an upright position), and with wide eyed fascination, carried a conversation made up of a series of “guuuh, ahwooo, gee”s.

  Since this first time, just like a Bluetooth connection after the first pairing, it was easy to get you fellas talking when held at the same eye level. No longer are you just flailing arms randomly touching! You would reach out for each other’s hands.

  On Saturday, when tata and I held you two, Henio said a series of probably very funny things, which made Luki break into the widest smiles. Your very first inside joke!

  Funnier yet, though, is that you have both also taken to talking to your mirrored reflections, when you did not before. I suspect you think it’s your brother in the reflection, given the coos, smiles, and reaching out are similar to those you give each other.

  It delights me to no end to see you two interact. While I want you both to be your own persons, I also wish for you to keep this extra special connection you have: borne of the same DNA, a someone who probably knows you like no other, with the same wiring but running at your own rhythm and speed.

  October 5, 2026

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• 12 weeks of you two

  Luki and Henio turn 12 weeks today!

  They are both prodigiously communicative, with a wide vocabulary consisting of goo, a-woo, gaa, buuu, kkkkhh, and kkkhee.

  Luki loves to talk when he’s on the bouncer and during baths. He looks you right in the eye, holds a proper back and forth conversation, and often laughs at whatever we say — without sound for now, but with the sweetest, widest smile and gets his whole body jiving!

  Henio absolutely loves massages, just like his dad, and makes it known by telling me so during bathtime massages. He talks whenever, wherever, when his mood strikes. This sweet little thing sometimes looks up at me with the biggest eyes while nursing and unlatches to speak ‘a-goo-gaa’.

  With communication comes more demands, more awareness, and more needs! The two aren’t easy at all, especially the past 2 weeks, but the smiles and coo-ing are excellent balm to the challenges.

  September 25, 2026

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• 11 weeks

  My boys are 11 weeks today. I write this with Henio in my arms (yes, Luki, I carry you just as much!).

  11 weeks of amazement at these two little tots with so much personality, personalities that color themselves bolder each day.

  11 weeks of wondering if I’m a good enough mother, fretting that I have to put one down to carry the other, when the last thing I want to do is to not hold either one of you when you need me.

  11 weeks of a constantly expanding heart, pushing myself to the edge and finding in myself yet more steam and strength to go on.

  Luki bats readily at the mobile, gets excited when he does and kicks out his legs and arms with a look of awe as if he wasn’t the one who just did it. Or perhaps he knows, and is fascinated by the discovery of cause and effect. The effect he has on the world, which will only get bigger and bigger from hereon!

  Henio stares at gong gong with utter love in his eyes, charming the man endlessly. He doesn’t bat at mobiles, but he loves to simply watch the spinning of one. When it stops, he makes sounds of clear demand for someone to quickly make it spin again! What a little boss!

  Both have had the chance to sit on the bouncer.

  Every time Henio sits on it, he poops. Yesterday, he looked out into our balcony and beyond with wide eyed wonder, seated on the bouncer.

  Luki, on the other hand, finally gets to meet us face to face while on the bouncer! He smiles and coos while we talk to him on it. He doesn’t like googoo gagas, he likes human talk!

  Do babies have a personality and when do they have one? Mine came out with big, distinct ones, and the days make them clearer and larger.

  Mama has miraculously found time to read, pages at a time, while caring for her two little otters.

  I’ve read:

  • Roadside Picnic
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
  • (Re-read) Exhalations
  • (Currently reading) East of Eden

  It’s a streak of very good new reads, and I’m mighty pleased. You can really never go wrong with classics.

  

  September 18, 2026

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• Letters to my boys #1

  Dear Luki,

  You can spend ages fighting sleep, quietly vibing in your cot. We call it “furnishing your interior world”, and your world must surely be well-furnished by now. What big thoughts are you thinking up in your little head? Will you remember when you’re older and tell us all about them?

  Dear Henio,

  Mama likes to call you 涵nibal Lecter. Truthfully, you terrify me with your self-possessed confidence, boldness, and ability to demand! what! you! want! It is terrific, and terrifying. I hope you have kept your fiery spirit with you.

  Boys,

  You are 10 weeks tomorrow. Both of you are growing more aware of the world around you, more aware of each other and people in your lives.

  Mama worries sometimes about not engaging you enough with activities: but when I finally feed, diaper, and burp, one or both of you are either asleep or crying. I try to talk to the twin who is done first while burping the other, I try to sing to you while feeding (although both of you are hyper-focused drinkers and hate being disturbed), I try to talk to you while diapering (failure — as both of you cry when on the changing pad).

  Yesterday, I tried to dance for you to Godma’s nursery rhyme series. Both of you loved it! Well, you fellas didn’t cry at least.

  Mama also put Luki on the bouncer for 3 seconds – it did not seem to be a pleasant 3 seconds for him…

  Tata is your primary bathgiver — do you remember this? He is a busy, busy man, but rushes home for this little ritual for you. You float in your little tub with the most adorable expressions, as if you can’t decide if you are in shock or enjoyment.

  Your gong gong calls you the ‘Wonderful Twins’. You are indeed wonderful!

  September 10, 2026

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• 9 weeks, 5 days

  Hello, my cosy, faithful little digital space.

  I’ll just get right into it – the luxury of time isn’t one new mothers can afford.

  Raising twins is hard. It may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it is also, without a doubt, the most worthwhile. I don’t want to go into the hard, because when future me reads this 1, 10, 20 years from now, that’s not what I care about remembering.

  Let me instead write about the humans.

  Yes, humans! I still get a shock at times while nursing them, looking at these very real, squirming, farting, grunting, warm-fleshed, blinking HUMANS that I’ve created. It happens every second since the start of humanity, but it is still a marvel. That out of nothing, two things collide and grow into the very things we are.

  Enough abstract musings.

  Here are the concretes, for posterity.

  Luki (Luki-bun, bun-bun,  小兔宝，小绍源), is the most pensieve, curious, and intelligent little boy! He has the expressions of one much older than his age. He loves looking around, especially at books (classics, mind you! not colored picture books!), and is very attentive when we read near him or read to him. When we put on Vivaldi and Mozart on the telly, he stares incessantly at the screen. Luki also loves loves looooves his tata. He gazes up at his tata with stars and moons in his eyes. Even when he was little-r, he would grab on to his tata’s shirt and arms when carried, and he’s had his most profound sleeps on tata.

  Henio (lil’ rascal, cutie-bun, 小涵宝,  mini-me) is a joy to behold. His personality is apparent from such a young age. He’s a free-spirit, bold, expressive, and chuckles in his sleep often — I suspect he’s laughing at his own made up jokes. This little one can be screaming and then, in a milisecond, be fast asleep. He’s a champion sleeper! When he’s upset about something, he lets you know in a non-specific way: you know he’s angry. He also loves the sound of Mandarin!

  Both boys are already coo-ing, and sometimes, they talk to each other. While Henio used to be more curious about Luki, Luki has now become more aware of his brother’s existence than vice versa. Henio grins cheekily and Luki has a sweet smile; Henio has big chuckles in his sleep and Luki has soft ones. All in all, I find them both precious, beautiful, amazing, a wonder!

  They have also begun to smell less like a generic milky baby, and more stamped with their unique sweat/skin scent, which is intoxicating to me. I love that they now have the earliest inkling of me as a familiar and safe being, sometimes following me with their eyes or reacting to my sounds, and prefering to be soothed by me.

  I have no delusions that these little beings are only ‘mine’ for this miniscule period of time before they’re their own.

  So I will enjoy every bit and second of this. Tough as it is.

  September 8, 2026

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• One day,

  very soon and suddenly, I’ll miss this.

  I won’t remember the nights without sleep. I’ll miss the way you fit perfectly into the bracket of my arms, for just this brief period. I’ll miss how you are buoyed and lulled by the rise and fall of my chest.

  I won’t remember the double shrieks, the knot in my throat as both of you cry yourselves red. I’ll miss how uncomplicated your needs are. Just a cuddle, a change, a burp, a breast. How I’m able to keep you safe and satiated.

  I won’t remember the endless burping thwarted by squirms. I’ll miss the way your faces, the tiniest sunflowers, rise towards me like I’m your sun.

  I won’t remember the long days that stretch and fold, defying linearity. I’ll miss it as the only time you boys are truly just mine (ours), before the world is yours.

  Your little grunts and sighs and squeaks and growls. Tiny dinosaur sounds. Little tongues peeking out. Eyes the blue-gray swirl of a stormy evening, bright with lightning; gazing into them for hours everyday.

  One day I’ll miss all of this.

  July 22, 2026

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• 2 weeks

  Where it all begins: your tata’s firm hand on my brow.

  A clean cry ringing with life fills the operating theatre, and something new bursts open inside me: a portal, a previously unknown gateway to love. I cry along with you.

  And comes the longest two minutes I’ve had to wait, waiting for the sum of my entire heart to be safe. A tug, the pain goes up to my shoulder. Then your cry, rife with vigor, joins your brother’s cries and your tata’s voice. Another burst, another portal.

  Everything feels whole.

  Half a meter down they were sewing my sawed up body back together again.

  Two new little humans I can scarcely believe are mine, are now entirely in my arms and my care. I cannot yet process that you are part me, but I see so much of your tata in you. All i know is that i will keep you safe and love you all my life.

  I feel myself, but augmented — stretched, grown, made more by you. Not physically (I’m pretty much back to my pre-pregnancy shape, thank you Asian genes), but in every other way.

  I, who would not wake in the middle of the night for anything, do so willingly, effortlessly, for you. In the huff and whizz of the electric pump, I gaze at the dozens of photos I’ve taken of you that day, my smitten grin thankfully obscured by the dim flourescent glow of the Spectra. In any case, I am alone, just me and my fawning over two little angels.

  Nothing is too difficult, if done for you.

  Not when you make your little dinosaur squeaks while nursing, with your little rosebud lips pouting in your sleep, your tiny fingers and toes like fresh pearls and just as precious.

  Your tata, right now, has given up his beloved bed at home to sleep in a hotel. No, he is not a staycation kind of guy. But for your health he does so without a complaint.

  This is a life your tata and i have held hands and walked gratefully, bravely, into. A life dedicated to each other and you.

  July 17, 2026

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• 3rd July 2026,

  the first day I meet both of you, perfect little beings that fill and expand my heart beyond what I could have imagined.

  Life is now a timed cycle of feed, burp, diapers, sleep, pump; a well-worn story of modern parenthood amidst sore boobs and milk stains.

  But oh your little faces, expressions, and sighs. Your tiny fingers flexing and the softest downy backs. They make it worth everything, nothing is too hard or too much. I go to sleep dreaming about you.

  It’s also incredible that despite both of you being of identical DNA, you are wholly distinct personalities to me. I love different things and have different memories i love of you (all of 4 days old!)

  Luki with the deep contemplation and serious eyes that blink and look with such clarity. Henio with the most adorable milk drunk little face, flushed and content.

  My two little angels. We love you so much.

  July 8, 2026

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• Love is warm socks: A reprise

  Your socks are tiny things, barely a little ball of cotton in my palm. A week later, your small feet will fill them.

  The memory of when I was 11, sitting in front of the churning dryer, does not feel so far away. My own socks spun violently around the drum: my own parents’ love in action.

  I wonder if the one of you given to bouts of hiccups would be the same earthside, and if the kicker would carry forth his habit. I wonder whose eyes you’d get.

  June 27, 2026

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• 21 weeks, 6 days

  6 December, 2025, was the first day we saw both of you. Two tiny shapeless orbs but with heartbeats that echo through the examination room; and there was your tata’s excitement, silent but just as loud.

  I loved you the moment we saw you, little bulbs with no form, or, perhaps even before that, when your force made me so sure I was carrying you, and that you were a boy. I loved you then, and more than that I knew you deeply, felt your soul and your energy and your life before those strong double lines materialised on the pregnancy stick.

  And then a touch of magic made you… boys.

  Every time we could see you two is a marvel. Your little noses and profiles, countable fingers and toes, the neat tiny bones of your spines. The way you would flex and clench your fists and stretch your limbs.

  I marvel at the gift of company even at your very start, little fingers that reach and prod across the wall at another life, playful legs that kick at one other. You would know each other in extraordinary ways that most do not experience. His eyes are your eyes, his blood yours.

  The doctor says to try and identify which flutter inside me belongs to which of you. I realised then that I have always known. Each little turn you make, the 3am somersaults one of you are prone to, the pre-dinner hungry dances, the punching up at my lungs, I always know who they belong to. But both of you are equally calmed by your tata’s voice and when he presses his firm hands on my belly.

  If I have given you any gift at all, my babies, it is the best tata in the world. I have given you his genes, his love, his protectiveness and loyalty, his strength and generosity and one day, his ability to make both of you laugh. We are so in love with you already.

  Love, Mama.

  March 19, 2026

  children, family, motherhood, pregnancy

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