My Cruel Gene

We had a family buka puasa last night, plus sort-of-a farewell dinner to by brother-in-law and gamily who resides in Doha for the last 7 years.

Iris, thoroughly enjoyed the company of her close cousins, particularly Myra who is just a month older than her. They both loved Barbie dolls (in particular Elina) and Ariel in the Little Mermaid, play dress-ups, and jumping on beds.

The very difference between them is Iris is um... slightly overweight for a kid her age, and Myra is, well... petite and light I could carry her with one hand. Iris' paed has warned us to watch her intake.

Any relatives and friends would mistake us for cruelly denying some of Iris' request for food, that we sometimes hide the extra rice/potatoes in case she called for a nasi tambah etc. Believe me when I tell you that she has got enough food around the house in many shapes of cereals (Koko Krunch her favs), apples, bananas, corns, veges, bread, cream crackers etc. She is just naturally a rice and potato addict. I am just quite worried.

Fortunately, she does not know of any McD, KFC, pizzas, Coke etc, except for occasional request for Mamee Monsters, ice creams and lollipops.

Looking in, I cannot blame her (just look into her eyes enough to melt me). I think that she is unfortunate enough to inherit my gene (my wife has always been lean), and she is exactly on the path that I was at her age. Needless to say, her now obsessive compulsive eating disorder was who I was up until I was 32 years old (I could understand the struggle my mum had to put up with me for fitting clothes etc. And the 'casual banters' by friends and relatives of what a big joke it was. To me growing up, relatives and friends can be cruel at times when I didn't know how to defend myself).

That serious. I put food into my mouth mindlessly.

Having said that, I fully understand how she will become if nothing is done now, although I cannot see why she is obsessing and compulsive about eating. Poor my precious little princess.

Her bulk of the problem is being a pet at her sitter's who feed her 3 times (of rice) between 1p.m. (after school) and 8p.m. (when I pick her up). The sitter just couldn't say NO to her. We are now 'racun'ing Iris to swap sitter next year. We tried once last year, Iris was crying whole day for the whole one month. Heartbreaking, I'll tell ya. Perhaps now she's older we get to talk her out kot...

Having said that, we as parents, tried our best not to make Iris feel less fortunate, or lose her self-confidence because of her size, and make her conscious enough to know that it is not healthy to be in that weight. She has since idolise Ariel to lose weight etc. We need to make sure she is not anorexic or bulimic in the process.

We are also stepping up efforts to wake her up on weekends to go to the park and spend lots of time at the playground. Yesterday she asked me to go for a swim. Good girl. Perhaps it is now sounded so selfish of me to go running alone and losing weight, while my own daughter is not in good shape. Maybe I should draw a diet and exercise plan for her too, with cheat days, and the works.

If she is in my gene for whatever makes me fat, she'll bounce in it to lose them too... Ain't nature an easy and cruel thing?