Baby contest

Whether parents like it or not, as soon as their baby is born they are entered into a grand competition – a baby contest. It begins right from the moment your bawling bundle of joy is weighed. Lucas was 3 kg when he was born. “Although that’s not an impressive weight…” wrote one of my relatives in an email (!)
It seems that the heavier the baby at birth the better, even though there is absolutely no correlation between birth weight and weight after 12 months. But this is just the opening event in the Baby Olympics.



Another major event is “How Much Milk Does Your Baby Drink?” Jason was terrible at this event, only managing to put away a measly 60 cc of moo juice at a time, and yet has managed to achieve a normal height and weight for his age.

Our next door neighbour asked Kelly yesterday how much milk Lucas could drink. The gauntlet had been thrown down.
"120cc, no problem,” replied Kelly with pride. I admit I too find it gratifying that Lucas has a good appetite.
"Only 120?” scoffed Mrs. White, “Our granddaughter could drink that much at one month!” The granddaughters’ parents live and work in Taipei and come down to visit at the weekends. Kelly still had a trump up her sleeve.
"Ah, but Lucas can drink that much every two hours.” This much is true.
Mrs. White thought for a moment and then conceded that their baby only had that much milk every two and a half hours. She skulked off, dejected. Ha! So we won. 1-0 to us. [whole family performs victory dance]

By the way, Lucas is now over 6kg and we think he is going to win the Earliest Talker event too. He has already started babbling a little. So watch out -
our baby is better than your baby!