On another note, my baby is now 7 months old. As a first time father, it has been interesting watching him grow, from the first time when he came out of my wife's tummy and where he peed all over me till now. When he cries, it is normally because he is hungry, or sleepy or to lesser extent, wet or soiled nappies. He did start teething too over the last week or 2.
He cannot crawl yet, but his legs are getting stronger, we got a steelcraft brand baby walker which can bounce as well and he loves bouncing up and down lol. He can now roll over on his tummy and roll back. He cannot say any words yet. I like how he rolls to cuddle up next to me and then falls asleep.
I did read some books on babies and sleep habits but so far he has been sleeping with either my wife or me and our cot has basically been unused from day 1 and used for storage of baby pillows etc instead. I am still waiting for the day when I have to suggest to my wife to put him to bed earlier as he seems to defy the baby book in terms of sleeping time given he goes to bed around 9pm or later. The change table on the other hand has been an essential daily use useful piece of furniture. Mine has wheels on it and we use our downstairs bathroom to wash baby and then wheel him out to dress. Another thing is we bought a big plastic baby bath for him but he has been using the smaller one instead because the big one is literally too big while the small one fits over the toilet and has a hole at the bottom with a plastic plug which can drain the water out into the toilet.
We have a steelcraft brand stroller. I must say, in Sydney Australia, the best baby shop for service we have encounted is Baby Kingdom in Bankstown. We have visited all the baby shops within a ten mile radius from parramatta and I have spent a small fortune on baby stuff including baby jumpers, rockers etc and we can always find an excuse to buy more toys, clothing, napkins etc for my little baby :)
I have already enrolled him into a Montessori pre-school and I have selected a top state primary school which has a kindergarten for him. We will need to relocate for him to be able to go to the school in question. Hopefully property prices will go up in a year or so and I can sell my current property... When I finish my MBA, I will tutor my son personally (I am a genius at maths and did 4 unit maths in high school at North Sydney Boys High) so hopefully, he can get enough marks to get into a good state selective high school such as James Ruse Agricultural high. If not, I guess he can go to North Sydney Boys High. I did not think much of my time at North Sydney Boys high given it was actually my own individual effort that got me my good TER score than actually learning in class. We had a hopeless physics teacher. I was just lucky I chose my current career after I chose double major of accounting and finance at UNSW. At North Sydney Boys, I had no career guidance whatsoever so when I got the Universitiy enrolment booklet, I had no idea of what half the courses were about. I just thought "Finance" = money since my mother always watched the Financial news and told me to shut the hell up everytime she watched it and my mother made big bucks doing what she did (foreign currency speculation).
If I could turn back time (like the song by Cher), I would have chosen Actuarial Studies, since an Actuary makes almost double what an accountant makes and that has been my sole regret in terms of my education. Lets face it, we work for money and not for charity. Ignoring tax, if you have twice the amount of income in the same timeframe and invest it wisely, you will have a much better retirement outcome and standard of living, so that is why I hate myself for not being proactive with my career during my highschool phase to find out more about jobs that will make money. Note that money is not the most important thing in life to me as I do not have any financial problems, health and happiness and family are equally if not more important.
I dont want him to go to a private school because I made it through life on public schooling and there was a recent sydney morning herald article where 100s of comments were made debating public vs private schooling which I printed out and read and the conclusion was it does not really matter in terms of quality so obviously, public schooling saves $$$. Yes, Sydney Grammar gets consistently good results for a high cost but the top school is still James Ruse which is a public school.
Should point out I also did English as second language back then to avoid doing sport back in high school. It is interesting because now, I actually do spend more time doing sport/working out than most of my colleagues/peers in my industry. I did weights throughout my teenage years and now I am almost 35, I just do natural bodyweight exercises like chinups and dips on dip bars in the domain behind Sydney hospital and then do laps around domain carpark and sprints up the hill and across the field on top of domain carpark. During summer, too hot to do sprints up the hill so I normally run across the bridge and back, around operahouse and mrs macquaries chair, past art gallery and back to work doing a 10k run. Its now cooler so I focus on uphill sprints and stamina building and I have never been fitter than now :) My work colleagues have started running too so on my easy day, I go running with them (I try to do Monday Thursday).
Oh and even though I only did 2 unit contemporary English (the lowest level) back then in my final years of high school, (I hated shakespeare, it is utterly useless and pompous literature that serves no purpose whatsoever in contemporary society) I can boldly say my English is actually better than a lot of my colleagues, especially my American one who has got an MBA already. He keeps asking me how to spell the most basic words. My hint for anyone is to read the paper or even sydney morning herald on line www.smh.com.au daily. If there are any new words, look it up immediately on www.dictionary.com. It will improve your vocabulary. I guess I was practical and only liked the subjects that involved calculations such as physics, chemistry, maths so my French and English got me scaled down.
What I really should be doing is researching the latest financial products on offer at commsec.com.au and making more money.... that is my goal for the next tax year.
