'Mum & Tod' Group

Yesterday, I brought Tobey to a 'Mum & Tod' Group (MTG) in a nice village nearby. It's actually his first. You might wonder what took me so long to start him on these kinda meetings. Well, pre-m'sia, he was just 6 months old, can't crawl and obviously too young for such meetings. Although at that point he was quite a socialble baby, there's no way he could have mingled with other kids as he wasn't mobile yet. I called the organisers to such groups then and they felt that the ONLY beneficial meeting he and I could attend is some baby massage class.

Now is the right time to start, as he has been having lots of social contacts with other babies back in Malaysia during our holiday. It would be a shame to not provide a continuation to this which has been tremendously beneficial for his social and emotional development.

Choosing the right meeting to go to is another task. You see, the local group near where I live (which is not exactly a fantastic neighbourhood, as our 'Taman' is next to a council estate which houses lots of young mums, unemployed men, you get the gist) will not have the type of kids I want Tobey to get familiar with, as it will include kids from my neighbouring council estate. Now, I am not being a snob here( I take the bus to work OK ;P), but seriously, do you want your baby to mingle with kids whose clothes stink of smoke and has lots of cats fur on them??? So, since I am still working on my UK driving license, I rather fork out cab money to go to a nicer MTG meeting in nicer neighbourhood.

Review of this MTG: Organisers were quite friendly, but most mums are still not use to having a 'yellow' mum in their group (I don't think this will ever be an issue in big cities like London), except one, that moved up from London(!!!) who actually took time to know me more. Others were just willing to exchange a word or two with me in passing. They were more interested in mingling and catching up with gossips with the other mums who were obviously the 'regulars'. There's these 2 mums that were super-duper 'sombong', as they actually put on perfect make-up and wore fully fashionable gear to a kids meeting and sat separately from everyone else. Both didn't even wanna look my way.HAHAHAHAHA! Having lived in this area for so long, I've seen all these before, therefore, I don't feel a thing. These people will take looooger time to warm up to you compared to people who are more used to foreigners being in territory. All you need is TIME. One thing I wasn't comfortable about was the overlicked toys available there...I guess it's also a chance for Tobey to build up his immunity to more germs from here!

Anyways, I have to stop rambling and here are some pics (which I lost during downloading, and needed to PAY to retrieve it...I simply have to have all of Tobey's pics, regardless of the price, especially when it's his first MTG) of Tobey playing with the mountain of toys available there, mingling and playing with other kids. Tobey is the youngest there. Every other kids were walking escept another baby girl who was stil combat crawling.



Oh, one rather distubing pic...this is my son taking a liking to a baby doll.....and at one point he was fighting with another boy to get hold of a play stroller with a baby doll on it. According to the organiser, the stroller has always been a 'hit' amongst the boys. HAH!I guess because such girly toys aren't exactly toys I would get for a BOY. It might be beneficial for me to get him a baby doll this weekend, just to satisfy his curiosity, maybe a black doll instead of a yellow one?