We celebrated it with family and friends from Pelita last Saturday at Tea Inn. We had a good time – most importantly good company.

We are so blessed to be part of God’s family. Thank you for your presence on Saturday – and mostly thank you for bringing Jet in your prayers.

And the yummy taro ice cream cake! It didn’t last for long.

Yesterday night, Lina and the kids were busy decorating cup cakes for Jet’s teachers and friends at school.

And here is the result – beautifully decorated yummy cupcakes:

And Jet had a blast sharing his birthday with people at SOS Pre-school today.

It was a short visit about half an hour, but the weather was perfect. And somehow when I look at these pictures, they give me some sense of peace. We should visit Maroubra beach once more before we go back to Kingsford in few weeks time.

The left and the centre were our family drawing. But we are a family of four, who is the other one? Could it be Jet is prophesying? The fifth member is apparently Jimmy Giggle from the TV show Giggle and Hoot. The right drawing is a monster cat.

From left: Jet at the park, Daddy and Jet, the toy that he got from Oma (kinda like potato head)

Above is actually Matt’s colouring. We are quite surprised that he is a multi colour kind of boy from the start, unlike his brother.

It was a humbling and a moving experience for us, we are now making our commitment to bring up our children as God’s children publicly. It was also a good reminder for me on what baptism really (in this case children baptism) means.

I’ve taken an excerpt from Baptism Service which I think does the explaining of children baptism really well (note: I’ve reformatted them slightly – emphasis are mine, I’ve also listed Jet and Matt not the other children):

Baptism: An explanation

Jesus said:

"Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.(Mark 10:14-16)

Children are baptised on the understanding that:

1. They will be brought up as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, and that
2. When they are old enough they will take upon themselves the promises that are made on their behalf.

Therefore, let us pray that God will grant to Jeremiah and Matthew that which by nature they do not have, that by the work of God’s Holy Spirit they may grow up to know the forgiveness of their sins, and to put their trust in the Saviour who laid down his life for them.

The meaning of the children baptism is simply summarized by the 2 points above, for us the parents to bring up as followers of Christ (our promises), with the hope that they themselves one day confess that Jesus is their Lord and Saviour.

Oh, how we long for that day to come.

The godparents were also making a promise, their promise is to pray and seek to encourage both Jet and Matt in the name of Jesus Christ. Kuku San is Jet’s godfather and I i Chen is Matt’s godmother.

And then the congregation prayed together.

We receive Jeremiah and Matthew into the congregation of Christ’s flock and pray that they will not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, but will bravely fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue as Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants until the end of their lives.

Amen.

Amen indeed.

Matt got wet first.

Jet went next, Kuku San was supposed to hold him but he was so scared – so I had to hold him instead.

  See Jet, it wasn’t scary at all – it’s just water (from the rest room ).

We went around the city (as usual), bought a Hazelnut Ice Tea at ChaiTime then we went to Chinatown, did a little window shopping. We ended up the night with a nice dinner at Kazumi Ikazaya (we’ve been going to Japanese restaurant a lot! – what can I say, Japanese food is nice and healthy).

I notice those hands were skinnier and wrinkled – I guess they’ve been working hard for 6 years.

This is how we look like at year 6 of our marriage – still good looking!

Thank you Lord.

Celebration #1 on the 14th – mom and grandma bought cakes for him.

Celebration #2 – at Sunday School – we brought cakes and goodies bags for his Sunday School friends. Below are his faithful Sunday School teachers.

Celebration #3 – Sunday evening with family and friends. We had lapis Surabaya cake, very yummy.

Thank God – he had a good time with his celebrations. We are entering the terrible two phase – we are praying that it would be the terrific two instead.

And so we have taken this holiday opportunity in Surabaya to consult different people and try different approaches.

First we went to a Shinshe (Chinese medicine man?) whom apparently also a doctor. He attributed Jet’s condition to his weak maag (can’t remember the English word). He advised against any kind of milk especially formula milk.

We then went to a skin doctor. She gave us skin lotion that needs to be applied 3 times daily and a medicine called Celastamine (from what I read, it seems to be an anti histamine).  She also advised against eating chicken, egg, fish.

Lina also wants me to try the traditional Javanese plant called Putrowali (which she called wrongly as Brotowali). Traditionally the plant will be boiled and the water will be drank, since Jet is still a child, we didn’t give the water for him to drink but we are using the water for his bath.

To summarize here are the things that we are trying:

• Minimize the use of air-con especially when he’s sleeping – thankfully it has been cloudy for most part of the week so it is actually not very hot at all
• Jet has not been drinking any kind of milk for few days now
• He takes a bath twice a day (doctor suggested 3 times – but I just couldn’t fit in the time). We don’t use any soap/shampoo for the bath – only water. At the end of the bath, I use a little towel dipped on Putrowali’s water and wipe it on Jet’s body for few mins. After bath, we apply doctor’s lotion. As usual sorbolene on the parts of the body that don’t get the lotion applied.
• We try to limit Jet’s consumption of chicken, egg and fish – it’s impossible to avoid them completely.

At the moment, the intensity of the Ezcema seems to be decreasing (less redness) compared to the first few days here. However it seems to be spreading little bit to other area of the body, noticeably on his face (although I am not 100% sure whether it’s Eczema or not).

It’s time consuming to look after him, and I do pray that his skin condition will get better over the time. At the same time looking after him, somehow makes me love him even more.

Jet has made farewell cards for his teachers. He managed to give out the cards personally to his teachers, except for one teacher, Todd – and he was quite disappointed that Todd wasn’t in on his last day (and few other teachers too like Nat). Anyway, yeah I am thankful for this one year – Jet has certainly learned quite a handful of things from this centre and most importantly he has developed relationships with the people there. I am sure he will remember the time in this centre as a happy one.

Another person in the household has also achieved a milestone last week, Lina got her P driver’s licence last Saturday. I am so proud of her, she managed to pass the driving test in one sitting. For someone who has know driving experience at all to where she is at now, in just a couple of months, is really something. And yeah, I hope and pray that she’ll be a good and safe driver. Driving is still making her very nervous, hopefully with more driving hours under her belt, the nervousness will cease.

My recent buying a property, reminds me of a conversation that I had with him during my last year of high school. At that time, we have been discussing about me going overseas to study. That night I guess he wanted to get a final confirmation from me, he asked me to consider between going overseas to study or having the money put into a house for me. Being an ambitious (and naive) person that I was, I took the option of studying overseas. I thought to myself, if I get a good degree, surely I can afford to buy a house for myself. I also wanted to make him proud by having a graduate degree from an overseas university, by getting a good job and by living a comfortable life. I kind of wanted to prove myself to him.

He also asked me on which field that I want to study. I was contemplating at that time between Computing and Civil Engineering (following his steps). To his credit, my dad didn’t push me to follow him in terms of career, he’s happy for me to choose something that I like.

Back to property, my dad did ask me quite often about buying a property in Australia. As an Asian parent, of course he wanted me to own my own house. On completely different direction, I remember my dad quizzed me about multiplications table, I was quite bad at it and he was very strict, he kept on testing me until I got it perfect.

I talk about him once in awhile with Jeremiah, there’s a picture of him and Jet at our old place’s wall. Of course, Jet doesn’t remember him. Hm, I really wish he is still part of our family life. On that note, I need to take care of my mom.

We’ve been looking to buy from few years back. We started looking to buy around Parrammatta area, we drove to Para on the Saturdays for few months (this is when Jet was little – he’s such a good baby, 2 hours drive back and forth doesn’t seem to bother him much). We were very close on buying a unit on North Parra, I really like the unit, it feels really homey. However later we found out that there were problems with the building and the owners were trying to get the builder to fix the problems – sounds like trouble to us, so we decided not to go ahead with the purchase.

The second period of searching was concentrated around Hurstville area, we didn’t find anything that we like that’s within our price range.

And then came along Matthew, so we had to put the property hunting for awhile. Then few months back we started to look again, obviously now it will be harder to travel far for inspection. So we started to look somewhere closer.

Just so happen, on Saturday on August, went to Pacific Square and saw unit for inspection. Went to inspect that, and found out there were other units open for inspection too, so we went on inspecting them. We then paid a visit to the PS Realty office (it handles the rental on the property), met LK one of the sales agents. LK told us that she’ll have a unit available on next Wednesday. We looked at the price and potential rental, it looks quite attractive.

LK told us to come and inspect on Wednesday with deposit ready as she has a lot of people wanting to buy. She wanted us to come and have a look first. And so we did that on Thursday (turned out she couldn’t get the keys on Wednesday).

I wish I could say the exchange and the settlement processes were smooth – but they weren’t, there were problems that I just don’t feel like recounting.

And now we moved in to the property, we will be living here for six months or so – just so that we can claim the first home owner benefits. Living here so far (5 days) is a love hate relationship. Love the close proximity of everything, the beach, bus stop, shops, eating places, library. Hate the noise, the internal walls are not double brick, so sounds come through the walls quite easily, at the moment I couldn’t sleep because someone is putting dance music on his stereo. I prayed that he’d want to sleep soon. Argh! Looks like I am going to call in sick tomorrow – been not feeling well since the moving.