mouse fix

KK’s computer mouse crashes onto the floor and breaks in two.

He puts it together, tries to fix it, can’t.

He grabs his wallet, announces - “I need to buy a new mouse, I can’t do any work without it” – and goes off.

Day frowns, wanders over to KK’s computer and fiddles around.

He comes over to me where I am reading to Lu and says: “I fixed papa’s mouse”.

I don’t register. I am lost in the world of “Lulu’s Shoes”.

KK comes back with a plastic bag in hand, Day runs to him and says: “Papa I want to show you something.”

The two disappear, then Day emerges. He is beaming.

Next KK comes out. I raise an eyebrow. KK, suitably sheepish, says: “He fixed my mouse.”

I drop “Lulu’s Shoes”. “How?!”

Day’s grin gets even wider.

I ask: “Day what did you do?”

“I took it apart and put it back together and I tried it and it worked. You see, papa, you must try again and again. You cannot try just once.”

The point of this is not that he can fix a mouse. I’m sure it was a case of KK being a careless checker.

But I like what Day did. Pro-actively trying to fix something for his papa which had already been deemed beyond redemption.

And I loved what he said. About trying again and again. I really really really do.

booger eater

In.



Out.



Then the booger-encrusted finger goes into her mouth.

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that one.

She's the only child of mine who eats the salty boogers, with relish I might add. (How I know it's salty is because I once did as a child)

But she'll only eat her own produce.

Now for the interesting part: The act of eating booger is called mucophagy.

An Austrian doctor Dr. Friedrich Bischinger says people who pick their noses with their fingers are healthier, happier, and more in tune with their bodies.

He says exposing the body to the dried germ corpses helps to reinforce the immune system.

He says: “With the finger you can get to places you just can’t reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner. And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system.”

Wow.

school outing

It all started with the hats (the one Day is wearing).

The school gave all the kids hats tucked in brown paper bags for Christmas. (actually it’s really rather sweet and as principal Alexis explains: “It’s so practical.”)

Then what happened – according to Alexis – was the kids started trying them out in class.

She told them: “These hats are not meant to be worn indoors. It’s meant to be worn outside when there is sunshine, like the park.”

Straight away the kids said: But we want to go to the park to try on our hats!

And so she organized an impromptu outing for the nearly 50 kids in the school to the Pasir Ris Park.

Fun fun fun!


* Day with one of his best friends at school, Nikita.

Lovely day except for my two wet blanket daughters who clung to me and whined throughout (I brought Lu along).

lu on her own

Sometimes the baby feels like an equal independent functioning member of the household.

This afternoon I crash along with Jo and Day.

The hot can-hardly-breath weather sends us to dreamland for respite.

Several times I recall raising my head, bleary-eyed, and register that the baby is up and about, pottering around the bedroom.

I cursorily pat the pillow and mumble: “Lulu go to sleep.”

At some point I assume she sleeps with her sibs.

I wake up 1 ½ hours later.

And wallah! There she is in the kitchen perched on a chair, trying to open the top off my Tupperware of Indian kacang puteh.



She starts when I pad in, as if she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She quickly recovers herself: “Mummy ah-pen pees.” (Open please)

She startles me with her derring-do.

Day and Jo, at her age, would have gone down with me. It might have taken them a while, but they would have. Even if they had not, they might not have ventured very far.

She is the most On Her Own baby I’ve had, and it’s likely a product of birth order than anything else.

She’s always had to hold her own with her sibs (whom she mixes with day in and day out sans adult intervention). Most times if I nap, the three play together. But because Day is holding the fort I am more assured.

When she’s on her own I am a little concerned. But it seems she can jolly well hold her own even when Day and Jo are not around.

Goodness knows she has enough practice going around on her own in the mornings when she is the first to wake up.

What does she do? I don’t quite know. If I were awake, I would.

Later I ask her: Lu are you a good girl? (That is the stupidest question to ask a kid but I ask anyway)

She giggles and says: No.

Lu, are you a naughty girl?

She waggles her head this way and that and then spits out: Yeeeee-es!

She doesn’t laugh so much when I make her wipe up her Milo spill.

dream report

I wrote this over a year ago.

And I think I'm at Dream B.

Which is pretty cool because we really got somewhere!

Except the kids don't stay at their grandparents.

Does it work?

Hell yeah. I'm so happy we're on our own, I'm so happy I can be totally kid-free in the mornings if need be.

So in that sense, it's a dream come true!

threesome

That's a Baby Bathtub. The sort that is used to bathe ONE tiny new-born baby.

penang

* Kids at a Penang bus stop

In summary, just three main things to say about Penang (28- 30 Nov):

* The kids now know they have tons of relatives scattered all over Malaysia
* Day really has a wonderfully experimental palate
* IT FELT SO BLOODY GOOD TO HAVE A REAL BREAK

Now for the longish main paper, in point form.

WHY WE WERE THERE

The gorgeous Ying-Ying’s wedding.

My 27-year-old Malaysian niece, the first in her generation (she is Day, Jo and Lu’s contemporary), gets hitched.



Me, Day and Jo head to Penang with my folks and some elders.

Why not KK? I told him to go. He, who hates flying and family dos, said no thanks.

Why not Lu? KK said: “Please leave one behind.”

FLIGHT

Jo’s first flight in her memory. Sydney has been erased.

Incredible how nonchalant both kids were.

Me and KK, our palms still sweat when we fly.

These kids read their books and munched their snacks right through the very short hour-long flight, even when there was mild turbulence.

What got to them was the stuffy ears. Jo: “I don’t want to fly on an aeroplane again, my ears are funny.”



FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY

My dad has four siblings. Three and him came out to Singapore.

The eldest stayed in Malaysia. He has nine children. They all have kids.


* My dad and his eldest brother

All turned up for Ying-Ying’s wedding and suffice to say, my kids and I, were effectively dazzled.

Most times we were all standing around yabbering away in Cantonese: “Who is this? Is this somebody’s son or daughter? What should my children call you? Yi ma? Gu ma? Bak gong? Biu yi? Kao fu?”

At the end of it all, Day and Jo still had no idea who was who. Day’s teacher asked him: Who got married in Penang? And he said “I don’t know”.

I did try to explain but I only got up to the part with the nine children and trying to point them all out.

I do hope they get that they have family in Malaysia, and I do hope they grow to love having a big family and hanging out with relatives.


* Day with Uncle Yew and cousin Felicia

My biggest joy this trip was seeing all the fabulous cousins and kids grown-up.

Here I am with (on my left) the maid who looked after me for the first 10 years of my life, and my cousin (on my right) who married her! And their three lovely kids!



FOOD FOOD FOOD

Come on, Penang and food!

Everything tasted heavenly probably because it’s the first time in a long while I had such an extended period of time to actually eat slowly and savour food without having to rush or wash up.

Day fell in love with the sourish Penang laksa. I ordered two bowls over two days, he finished both off.



And in all our meals of big fish, big prawns, big clams, big oysters, he ate it all with relish.



Jo just kept asking me for bee-tai-mak fishball soup, her comfort food.

MY BREAK

Oh my God. My first time out of the country since our return from Sydney over two years ago.

No housework!

No baby to carry!

No computer!

No mobile phone!

I am the sort of person who would happily throw the mobile and computer out the window, so imagine my joy at being completely cut off in a hotel with no computer and a mobile which does not roam.

What a BREAK.

Waking up lazy every morning, napping every afternoon, sleeping at 11 because there really is nothing to do, not even having to think about anything / argue about anything because the relatives are taking care of the entire programme.

Come to think about it, the me/Day/Jo combination was perfect for me. If KK were there I’d have to cater to him. I won’t care to explain that.

Happy happy happy!

xiao ren wu de xin sheng

Something for a boring day.

c&c: food

Last in the series.

On their food attitudes.



First off, not once have I tried to force something on my kids that they didn’t want to eat. It’s nothing to do with parenting philosophy. I just can’t be bothered. Instead I spend all my energies trying to persuade them to sleep.

So food-wise it’s always a case of “Dowant done”. As in, dowant veggies? Done. Mummy will eat it.

LU

She is the fussiest of the three but it’s due more to age than anything else.

To try and show me that she can take control of her food, she does things like pick out cabbage and fling it on the floor.



Why I say it’s age is because on other occasions, she eats the cabbage.

I don’t think she is really fussy. Though she is really messy, so unlike her sister.



Loves: Steamed peas and corn, macaroni, grapes, guava and everything unhealthy (in particular, salt-laden french fries and potato chips).

She also leaves her food half-eaten and tends to forsake whatever she is eating when she sees something new.

So whip out biscuits and she abandons her ice cream before coming after you, claws bared, yelling “Pees! Pees! Bee-teet!” (Please! Biscuit!)

JO

She has always been the foodie and she still is.

It’s obvious that she truly enjoys her food, unlike Day who sometimes looks like he’s working to eat.

She hardly has issues with leaving food behind.

If anything she asks for seconds. And thirds.

Neither is she fussy. She eats almost anything.

Loves: Carbs: macaroni, pasta, rice, chicken, pork, fruit, peas, dou miao. She has some issues with some vegetables, doesn’t quite like choy sum-type veg, but then neither do I!

DAY

He eats widely.



Chilli padi, ducks tongue and sucking the marrow out of pig bones with a straw is amongst his favourites. He also chomps on raw spring onions.

We pretty much stick to what we tell him: Try everything at least once and if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it ever again. (I take over the remains)

He also finishes all his food (unless it’s restaurant portions beyond his control).

This, I trained. I HATE wasting food.

A few months ago, after his incessant complaining about how he didn’t feel like eating, and after a few times of my useless proselytizing about the starving children in the world, I starved him.

He didn’t want dinner, I said: “Fine. If you don’t eat this I will not give you any food or drink apart from water for the rest of the night. You will know what it is like to be hungry.” He didn’t look back and stalked off in a huff.

Five am the next morning he crawled into my bed, cold hands shivering, begging me for a drink, anything to fill his tummy.

I told him: “This is what hunger feels like.”

Since then he hasn’t made any more noise.

He takes the portion he can finish, if he doesn’t like it he doesn’t take it, if it’s a new dish and he doesn’t like it on first try, I finish it.

That just about sums it up!

c&c: strangers

Who amongst the three is most approachable?

LU



She is by far the most sociable, outgoing and cheerful of the three. (the photo doesn’t show that but it’s so hard to snap her, she’s always moving, she’s always blur)

Not including times when she is cranky and clingy from sleep deprivation (she does need a lot more sleep than the other two), she is the one to:

* Wave and say “Hi ah-cle / Hi ah-tee” to random uncles and aunties.
* Approach, “talk” to and play with strange children anywhere.

This, despite her currently going through a traditionally clingy phase. Then again, she’s always been consistently smiley.

I wait with bated breath the day she can actually hold a conversation, to see if the cheerful streak runs true.

JO

Jo is the one strangers remember with a smile after they meet her.

She isn’t outrightly cheerful in a bouncy way like Lu. But she is a great communicator.

Talk to her and she’ll probably talk to you quite seriously. And make sense in a funny amusing way.

She’s charming. What a gift.

I bring her for lunches or meals with my friends and they all enjoy her company (only when she’s alone. When the sibs are around it all goes downhill because there’s too much competition).

Here she is with my friend Jo (for Josephine!). The two Jo’s thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.



DAY

He is the most shy and awkward.

He does not like to make eye contact, does not say hi unless he is reminded and will never make small talk with strangers unless he already knows them or really likes them.


* The fake smile

He reminds me of myself when I was a kid. And he reminds me of KK now.