My Baby’s First Contest

When XX was one and a half years old, she competed in a baby contest and breezed through all rounds of audition to the finals. She was fast enough in putting shapes into the shape sorter box to enter the semi-finals, she was fast enough in running a 5 metre track to reach the finals, and she was 5th in the fastest 10 metre run in the finals. She won 8 packs of diapers to everyone’s joy!

Somehow for YH, I missed enrollment for him in baby contest. Sorry babe, somehow Mummy missed all of the contests as she was busy running after both you and sis daily. Ok, excuse I know.

And for YT, I missed again for the Healthy Breastfed baby half a year back. I was so sure he would have won with his muscular arms and thighs.

Then a week ago, Kel showed me the Most Sunshine Baby contest organized by Plaza Singapura, so I sent in YT’s best smiling picture full of hope and was asked to go for audition on Sunday.

Days leading up to the audition,  we were thinking of ways to make him laugh. The criteria was simple. The Most Sunshine Baby. If we can make him flash his usual big smile, we’ll have a good chance to win.

Come the day of audition, YT fell asleep on our way to the contest venue. But he was woken up by sudden loud screams by YH. YH loves to scream out of a sudden nowadays and he is getting on everyone’s nerves. So the poor baby slept for only 5 minutes. As we were queueing up for our audition, I was rather nervous and suddenly lost all confidence in making him laugh. Still, the spouse thought I should go on stage with the baby. The organizers allow only one parent to accompany the baby upstage. There was a cameraman ready to capture baby smiles and a floor mat full of toys.

The clock starts ticking even though I didn’t think there’s a specific time limit. I started with Kel’s trick of throwing YT in the air. It brought a cute smile to his face which lasted 2 seconds. When he sat on the mat, he wanted to explore the toys but he didn’t seem interested enough to smile. So, I pushed the toys away and started singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, one of the sure win song to put a smile to his face, it didn’t work. The siblings were down stage singing a funny song with actions thrown in but he just stared. Then I took out his favourite biscuits Baby Bites and he just took it with little expression. Usually, he would smile endearingly but not that day. Next thing I heard was “Ok, it’s done!” from the cameraman. “But he didn’t even smile!” I said in disappointment. So I carried my baby off the stage and XX ran to us saying,”Baby didn’t smile…”

I looked at YT, and concluded we were just having lousy luck. Firstly, YT was sleepy, he was not in his best state to perform. Secondly, the cameraman was impatient. I knew because the day before we were also at the audition venue and saw how some babies were kept tickled for a solid 10 minutes and the cameraman just waited patiently to capture baby smiles. What a contrast to ours which did not even lasted 3 minutes.

I kissed my baby and you know what? I felt my eyes welling up with tears. Oh what a sore loser I was! I hope my kids did not see those embarassing tears. Kel consoled me to take it as a fun experience. And when we got into the cab, YT fell asleep within seconds still holding onto his Baby Bites.

We received an email today to inform that our baby was not shortlisted for finals, as expected. I hope there’ll be another baby contest soon.

My lovely YT, you did your best even though you did not know what was the big hoo ha all about, as usual. We love your smiles and you are already the winner in our hearts 🙂