killer feeding

Considering that Dee’s tongue is always sticking out of her mouth (that is her typical expression), one would think that she would be a greedy child.

But no.

Unfortunately for me, this daughter of mine just kills me whenever it’s feeding time because it’s so difficult to get food into her mouth. A far cry from when we first introduced food to her.

Bearing in mind that she’s nearly 7 ½ month old, I think it’s terrible that every day, she only drinks a few sips of water and has perhaps a spoonful or two of jarred baby food.

She regards every spoonful I thrust in her face with natural disdain. She literally sniffs at it before clamping her mouth so tight her lips disappear. I can’t force anything past that forbidding line.

Neither am I the super-patient type who will sit there for hours trying to trick her into opening her mouth by putting up a song-and-dance. She doesn’t want it, so be it. I don’t spend more than 15 minutes trying to coax her.

Sometimes she ends up not eating the entire day, apart from breast milk.

It is a bit of a concern for at six months, Day was already devouring huge bowls of eel porridge.

Apart from a bit of chicken, she’s only had fruits, orange vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes and the only green she’s tried, pea mush. Erm, I don't think she likes it.


Could it be perhaps be that I am not making things appetizing for her? Possibly.

After all, Day had the benefit of a very experienced maid blending all sorts of good stuff for him, from broccoli to spinach and meats, into fragrant porridges.

The first time I cooked porridge for Dee (the first time in my life I cooked porridge), she didn’t take very well to it.

The second time was better, but what’s the point of cooking a bowlful of porridge if she only eats two spoons?

So I’ve been feeding her mainly jarred baby foods, for the few times that she ate relatively well, it was the Heinz stuff.

At the rate she’s going, however, her fat is going to melt off for breast milk alone at her age is not going to be enough. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Getting thinner, I mean.

day says...

“Biscuits. Ts. Ts.”
“Grapes. Ps. Ps.”

Why he tends to repeat and hiss the ends of his words, under his breath to himself, I don’t know. But my youngest brother – the only scholar in my family – used to do something similar, so it may be a good thing.

“Sher Maine, please take the grapes for me.”

As liberal as I think I am, I will not allow my child to call me by name.

When he does this however – calling my name not like the way my friends call me, but with the exact same (Cantonese) inflection my parents called me (he must have picked it up from Singapore days) – I am laughing too hard to admonish him.

Me (after seeing him bite his sis): “Why did you bite your mei-mei?”
Day: “I didn’t.”

Lying. When did he realize that he can not speak the truth? And how often has he or will he lie to cover his own backside?

Repeatedly I ask him and repeatedly, he denies doing the deed. It's only after various permutations of asking the same question, that he admits to it.

Is it then more important to reward him for telling the truth, or to rightfully punish him for his naughty deed? (after all, why should he tell the truth if it’s going to earn him a stern rebuke?)

good food

Perhaps it’s fitting that it was during Sydney’s Good Food Month – a month of gastronomic events and the highlight of the city’s food calendar – that my sister-in-law came to visit, as it was during this time that we had more than our fair share of Sydney’s fresh produce and fine food. (so paiseh, but all generously sponsored by her once again)

First up was bills.

SOLITARY RESTAURANT

Then there was the Solitary Restaurant, so-named presumably because it stands alone at a bend in the road. And perhaps people who want to be alone might find solace here.


The food was pretty spectacular, by my standards anyway, I’m no gourmand.


But it is it’s location that is a winner. Aptly located at Cliff Drive, it sits on a cliff with a million-dollar view of the Blue Mountains.


It’s what I call a bowel-loosening kind of place. You know some places, when you get there, you just need to go to the loo because you’re so relaxed even your sphincters want to let go. That’s just what it is. Small white cottage, white wooden shutters, lots of sunlight, great food, great expansive view.

THE WHITE HORSE INN

The very next day we dined at the White Horse Inn, recommended by that esteemed Singapore entertainment rag, 8 Days.


Found in the the little historical town of Berrima (one street of quaint cottages and nothing else), it supposedly won some award for Best Food and Service in the Southern Highlands.

Food was alright.


Service was stellar. Day got a pot of what appeared to be brand-new colour pencils to occupy his hands, and the effusive waiter was helpful without being irritating.


CAFÉ FRAICHE


Last up was a café also in Berrima where we had cakes and coffee. Nobody recommended it, but it’s one of those places you decide to step into and you don’t regret.

The café was full of whimsy and pretty things, very English.


We enjoyed our cuppa in the back garden on a bench-table with branches to put our feet on. Nice.


Now we are back to… chicken soup, stir-fried vegetables and pasta from Sher’s Kitchen.

mountain cottage

We didn’t know what to expect of our overnighter at the Blue Mountains, but in true style, my sister-in-law had booked us into (probably the most expensive accommodation I have ever put up in) a A$285 a night two-bedroom moments cottage.


A gorgeous, opulent, English-style cottage which was so well hidden amongst the trees and shrubs we unwittingly passed by it countless times, the lavish interior made all our navigational frustrations evaporate.


Flouncing across the squeaky-clean timber floors and switching on the chandeliers, we squealed when we saw the spa-bathtub in one corner of the bedroom and all four of us (KK, me, Day and Dee. Not including sister-in-law) jumped right in.


All my life, regarding accommodation, I pay peanuts and of course, I get monkeys. This cottage experience was really something else. It's the kind of place where you check in and you don't go out.

KK, however, didn’t fancy it. Too fussy and Victorian for his tastes.

Neither did Dee.


Despite her sitting pretty in the bed, she had a terrible night’s sleep. Every time she opened her eyes – which happens pretty often as she is a very light sleeper – instead of closing them again as usual, she would jerk awake as it’s a new environment. And scream.

The next morning, she promptly dislodged such a big load of shit it spilled out of her diaper onto the high-class bed, leaving a huge brown stain which I tried frantically to clean but could not.

gorgeous in oz

By Singaporean standards, Dee probably wouldn’t attract much attention.

It may seem a bit of a mean thing to say, but even as their mother, I view my children objectively and frankly, Dee would be regarded as another typical slitty-eyed Chinese baby.

Fat, certainly, but nothing extraordinary.

Not pretty in any way, at least not in Singapore where big-eyed sharped-nosed babies are admired.

Very different story here.

Passers-by, restaurant waiters, supermarket cashiers, they do a double-take when they see Dee and then the gushing starts: “Oh, she’s a GORGEOUS baby! You are so LUCKY! She is so BEAUTIFUL! Oh look at those ROLLS!”

There is a particular old lady I sometimes meet on my grocery rounds and always, she stops to stroke Dee’s cheek with a wistful smile while mumbling: “Beautiful, beautiful!”

And there was the waiter who couldn’t keep his eyes (and hands) off Dee, stopping next to her every time he took our order / brought the dishes / cleared the table, to bend down, stare into her eyes and tell her how gorgeous she was before carrying her.

Every time she gets fawned over, I raise an eyebrow at KK. Frankly, as gorgeous as we her parents think she is, we don’t get the Aussie adulation.

I did think it may be that Aussies love their babies; but as I don’t see the fair-haired blue-eyed babies (the ones that I think are gorgeous pin-up-type bubs) get the same kind of attention, I think it’s just her.

The novelty factor, perhaps, of seeing a baby with small eyes and a button nose dwarfed by huge pillowy cheeks.

car sick

Not her. Us.

It’s truly sickening to be trapped in a small space, screams reverberating all around, with nowhere to go.

Aussie kids, I’m told, stay perfectly still and quiet in their car seats as they are used to it. Not this girl. I stupidly caved in on several occasions and unstrapped her as we were traveling at 110km per hour to sooth her. Bad move.

Still, she didn’t cry as much this time round. No doubt due to the spacious but pricey Tarago doing its job.

bloody blue mountains

While peering at an endless vista of gentle hills covered with blue-ish eucalyptus trees collectively known as the Blue Mountains, Day jumped up and promptly knocked his head on the sharp edge of the tourist signboard.

And that is where he got his first bloody head wound.

Dimly, as I scrabbled for tissue in a panic to staunch the blood flow, I remembered passing by a smallish one-storey Blue Mountains hospital and I wondered if he would need stitches.

Luckily, no.

Our trip to nearby Blue Mountains (less than two hours drive) - inclusive of a rented six-seater Tarago, food at recommended restaurants and one night’s stay in a freaking beautiful bed and breakfast - was kindly sponsored by my visiting sister-in-law.

Except for the fact that KK lugged his laptop and notes along, it was otherwise a holiday.

krispy kreme

I first read about these fluffy tyres of heaven from my friend Esther’s food blog.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts – the recipe dates back to 1937 - are apparently so good that people in Singapore cart them back by the dozens or stuff them in their luggage when visiting US, Canada, UK or Australia. Or get friends to do it for them.

Since I’m bloody here, I thought I’d better try them.

Are they good? You bet!


They’ve got heaps of doughnut varieties. But the specialty is the hot glazed doughnuts. Fresh off the conveyor belt, they are, like what Esther says, like eating air.

Hot, (very) sweet air with an even sweeter thin-as-tracing-paper crispy glaze.


These babies were hand-picked by the counter girl, who very carefully picked and chose the roundest, plumpest ones for us.

In Sydney, I’ve been told that of the over 10 branches, only two dole them out fresh – the airport and the Penrith branches – before it is transported.


Lucky us, we have been to both, and have eaten the doughnuts fresh and hot twice.

weiyi

Straight from a tiring seven-hour overnight flight from Singapore, my air stewardess cousin Weiyi took a quick bath before splashing out on a $20 cab ride to pay us a visit, bearing gifts aplenty.

Namely, dried mango (which she bought from Hong Kong) and Meiji chocolates from good old NTUC.

Owing to her flight schedules and the fact that she lives on the other side of Singapore, she has never seen Dee before.

On first sight, when we crept into the bedroom and pulled back the blanket from still-sleeping Dee, I will remember my cousin’s tiny little gasp when we unveiled Dee’s thunder thighs.

The three hours she stayed to play with Dee and have breakfast with us by the beach - before going back to her hotel to nap for her returning night flight - was full of interesting nuggets of information like how she considers Sydney a “difficult” flight because of the rather demanding Sydneysiders, compared to Melbourne flights which are far more pleasant.

I believe her.

For one, people here aren’t very friendly. For another, she is backed by 12 years of experience.

independent day

Mummy, go away.

Words which give me a thrill every time Day utters them. I love it. That my son is telling me to go away.

There is no rudeness or anger, not the way a teenaged Day might say it. He utters it most earnestly, eyes wide open, with a lot of head-nodding. He is trying very hard to convince me that it’s OK for me to go away.

I love that he wants to do his own thing, be out of our sight, that he is in his own arrogant fashion staking out his space.

It’s become more pronounced in the last three months since we came.

He’s been forced to be way more independent than he ever was back home in Singapore because there is, apart from me and his papa, no one else to help him do anything.

He pulls chairs from the dining table, stands on them and makes his own honey drink. He squeezes out the honey, unscrews the water bottle, pours in the water and stirs it.

He pulls a small stool to the toilet bowl so he can climb up on the stool, stand on it, pull down his pants, lean on the toilet cistern with both hands and pee into the toilet bowl. (Lucky for us, the aim at that angle is straight and true.) He sits on the toilet bowl on his own.


He (mostly) feeds himself, though his dinner manners usually makes my blood boil, and he sometimes helps me to clear the dinner plates.

But it’s when he’s outside that he says it most often.

When he scampers far, far ahead and when I try to catch up, he flees from me and tells me to go away.


He revels in disappearing out of our sight and those paths which we allow him to go on his own (of course it has to be paths where we can “catch” him when he emerges), he loves to tread. When he walks those paths (we peep), he slows down, his pace grows nonchalant and he swings his arms, as if he feels he can let loose without us around.

He threatens to cross the road alone. Whenever he races, far ahead of me, to the edge of the road and I am huffing and puffing and sometimes screaming for him to stop from behind, he literally stops with the toes of his shoes sticking out over the pavement before he looks back with a huge grin.

While I like his desire for independence, I don’t find this funny at all.

mother feeder

Dinner: Squalling Dee will only keep quiet if she is carried, as usual, and her papa has to carry her.

As I scoop a spoonful of rice into my mouth, followed by another spoon for Day and then another for KK before repeating the whole triple-mouth cycle throughout dinner, KK remarked: “You have to feed all of us, including the baby.”

Such responsibility.

pout

As grumpy as her bare-backed suit.

bills

Domino’s pizza, fish and chips and fast-food chicken is the furthest we have gone in terms of our eat-out culinary adventures. A freaking waste considering we are in Sydney.

With KK’s sis visiting, however (she belongs to that demographic of fashionable single women which all credit card companies love to hound), that had to change.

The very next day after her arrival, she, armed with several guide books, an 8 Days guide to Sydney and an itinerary she had carefully mapped and typed out herself of “must-sees”, shepherded us to bills.

bills (no caps, mind you, in a true indication of its uber-coolness and personality) is a gourmet restaurant started by a rather handsome Jamie Oliver-ish chef called Bill (what else?), which specializes in breakfasts and KK’s sis swears it’s been mentioned ad nauseum in all the Sydney guides as a must-go.

After two buses, getting a little bit lost and burning in the ridiculous 36 degree heat (apparently 14 degrees hotter than the average) KK told her: “This restaurant had better be good.”


And it was. All at $73 for our bacon/eggs combo, pancakes and these corn fritters.


The price probably includes the experience, and dining at bills is the exact Australian dining experience: All sunlight, white walls, timbered floors, fresh green apples on wooden tables and fresh ingredients.


Would we come back?

Probably not. Too far, too ex and I'd be happier with the poor man's option: Trying to copy the recipes (particularly the one for scrambled eggs, which is deceptively easy) off the bills website!

racism

Memorably, our first brush with racism here took the form of yellow chicken biscuit snacks, which a bunch of hooting hooligans were popping over at KK and Day.

We had rather unfortunately got onto the same bus as the bunch of 10 or so teenaged boys, and Day had, once again, unfortunately, trooped his way to his favourite seats at the back of the bus where the boys were clustered.

Despite the shouts and hooha, the stomping on the bus floor, the F-words which were assaulting Day’s ears once every second or so, in typically Asian fashion, I whispered to KK when he suggested we move: “Wouldn’t that be rather rude? They’ll know we’re moving because of them, won’t they?”

As my strange interpretation of courtesy and desire to show that I am the most tolerant person around, even of louts, kept us in our seats, those chicken snacks were thwacking on the back of KK’s and Day’s head, but I didn’t know then.

Day, in friendly form, made to stand up on the seat and turn around presumably to say hello to the boys. KK yanked him down in time.

Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones who were offended.

As the bus driver suddenly stopped the bus and stalked to where we were, I watched wide-eyed as he clapped his hands, thumbed the bus exit and sternly told the boys: “Alright. All of you walk. You are getting off now. You know why.”

One of the boys yelled: “I’m not doing it.” He obediently stepped off with the rest of his sorry friends, however, when the driver refused to budge the bus.

The doors closed, the bus moved off, and all the passengers gave the driver a round of applause.

That night, as I went out on one of my occasional solo nightly jaunts to the main thoroughfare to buy a small latte for KK’s night sip, and as I slipped on my slippers, KK piped up: “Wear your track shoes just in case you have to run.”

speckled dee

She's inherited my childhood tendency to develop rashes after a fever.

The little red spots get bigger and bigger until they all merge into one another, before the entire red patch subsides in a day or two.

dee goes to the doc

In the nearly three months we have been here, the only one who has gone to see the doctor is Dee. Not once, but twice.

The rest of us have been ideal: Hale and hearty, with nary a sniffle. We hope it stays that way for the rest of our time here.

The baby, well. First she had that fever, which thankfully went away on its own.

Then I had to step into the Coogee Family Medical Centre, just 10 minutes walk away, so she could get her vaccination. There will be plenty more of that to come, but that’s just routine, so it’s fine.


Monday afternoon, she felt a bit warm.

Monday night, it was a raging fever. Our thermometer was spoilt but when I placed my lips against her forehead, it burnt.

Tuesday morning, she was fine. Tuesday night, her forehead singed my lips.

And so on and so forth, her moods, our moods, all yoyo-ing up and down together with her temperature.

I “suka-suka” dispensed fever medicine from my imported-from-Singapore stash of paracetamol, playing doctor, reading the labels 10 times before calculating the right dosage and then under-dosing anyway because I didn’t want to overdose.

Still, she burnt and still, she whimpered in misery, no doubt owing to the fact that she was also suffering from what seemed to be constipation.



Today, Thursday, we brought her to the Medical Centre again, A$50 consultation fee (only for us, natives see the doc for free) be damned.

The doc’s thermometer read 39.4 degrees Celcius.

He poked, he prodded, she managed to dredge up her reserves for another screaming fit, but in the end he couldn’t find anything wrong. Chest clear, ears clean, throat fine.

Back in Singapore, by this time, the paed would have stuck a suppository up her anus.

Here, the very calm doc, who simply fed her some Panadol, actually looked at me and said the last thing any mystery-illness-fearing parent would want to hear: “I don’t know what’s wrong”.

He remarked that it was probably not anything life-threatening like meningitis though, as she wasn’t completely limp, and he reckoned it’s just a virus.

Still, he told me to collect a sample of her urine just in case it’s the dreaded Urinary Tract Infection.



* The fever just broke, it lasted almost exactly 72 hours. Immediately after we left the doc, she cooled down and stayed that way. While I can't help thinking of how far $50 could have gone, KK insists its money well spent, for peace of mind.

lost boy

For one heart-stopping moment today, we thought we lost our son.

As I came up behind KK, he, pushing Dee in her pram, turned around, looked at me and very calmly (he's always calm) asked: "Where's Day?"

I, starting to panic, spluttered: "I thought he was running in front of you!"

KK: "No, he was behind me. I walked on ahead because I saw you coming and thought you could see him."

Thanks to his parents' assumptions, Day disappeared somewhere between house number 16 and house number 30 along Leeton Avenue.

For the record, this, one of my worst nightmares (losing sight of my child), normally would never happen.

But today, as we were all walking towards the beach, I remembered I left something at home and by the time I was back on the road, there was a good 100 metres between me and KK, who was with the kids.

I spotted Day next to KK and so started day-dreaming as I strolled along.

KK saw me behind and thinking he had his tail covered, forged ahead. By the time I caught up, Day was gone.

Standing there, I nearly died. What if I can't find him? What if he's kidnapped? What if he's running on the road and some car runs him over? What if someone else finds him and doesn't know who he belongs to?

Heart racing, I whirled around and ran back the way I came, keeping an eye out.

I found him at number 28, stepping out of the yard as if he had lived there all his life. He looked puzzled, composed and deathly serious all at the same time.

I ran to him and hugged him like I've never hugged him before. He flicked his ear and gave me an earnest smile before putting his hand into mine.

I don't know if he understands what happened.

But truthfully, I'm surprised it took this long for us to lose him. Day is a kid who enjoys running far, far away on his own. The farther, the better.

entrepreneur girls

If that isn't the classiest piece of denim ever, I don't know what is.

What's even better is that the design was brained by someone who was my school mate for seven years. Incredibly, Dorothy turned her back on the lucrative world of corporate banking, checked into fashion school for nearly a year to hone her craft, before setting up her online shop, Dotted Line. All because she wanted to create.

OK fashion has got nothing to do with Day and Dee, but at the moment, what's on my mind is not the kids but how Dot's designs make me want to wear something pretty and feminine. Presentable. Anything other than what I am currently wearing.

On the subject of friends who are pursuing far more exciting lives than mine, another friend Deborah, whose shop Maternity Exchange was responsible for the nicest maternity clothes I have ever worn (and only because I only had to rent them, not buy them!), her business is going Bigger and Better with a move from Specialist Centre to Marina Square.

This woman, mind you, was attending business meetings and fretting about renovations within a month of giving birth to her second child in May.

Me, I've got no entrepreneurial aspirations whatsoever.

kiddy dj

The day the kiddy DJ came to the Coogee Dolphins playgroup, the resident photographer, Liesel James, snapped this photo of Dee trying to stuff a handful of fine blonde hair into her mouth. I like.

For more pics of Day's playgroup on disco day, click here.

For what was essentially a kiddy disco, complete with wacky DJ (dressed in suspenders, too-tight shirt, iffy cap and goofy black-framed specs), spinning ball of lights and pounding music (kiddy ditties of course), Day was surprisingly turned off by the whole affair.


I fully expected him to like it but he didn't. The few attempts I made to drag him into the hall, he ran out again.

However, as he loves singing and dancing when it's just one person holding fort with just one voice without the jazz, I gather he's more an acoustic rather than a party boy. In a nutshell, he doesn't like loud music or bright lights.

I enjoyed myself with Dee, though.


In fact I think the moms enjoyed the whole affair just as much as, if not more than their kids.

Some moms even came in heels, all dressed up, to boogie the morning away.

spiritual white fence post

Unlike kids who grow up believing in divinity, Day pretty much thinks the world starts and ends with himself.

There was that school mealtime prayer he used to say, but that was it.

So when he spotted this, tucked away in a corner of our favourite picnic spot at Coogee, he turned to ask me: "What's this?"


I can't believe I actually snapped a photo of him prying away, but I did - to capture Day's first glimpse of Jesus - before I dragged him away in case he tried to pull anything down.

Did I answer him? No. I tried to, but I realized I didn't know what to say.

This spot overlooking the Coogee beach where the shrine is, however, apparently caused quite a stir three years ago when the Virgin Mary was apparently sighted.


It was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald no less, in an article titled "The fathers, the sun and the holy post", that hundreds who visited the white fence post saw an apparition.

The furor has since died down but nuns apparently still come to upkeep the shrine, place fresh flowers around it.

We didn't see anything but if we do, I'll write about it for sure.

armchair somersaults

chong and alice visit

Once again, friends come and friends go.

And once again, with the departure of Chong and Alice, who stayed with us for a night and had breakfast with us, I am sorely missing the (physical) company of friends.

Just simply sitting around a sofa, enjoying companiable silences, chatting whenever we feel like it, drinking honey, walking out for breakfast.

Of course I can do all this with the hubby, but having a steady diet of KK and nothing but KK, whose head is always buried in his books and who usually doesn’t talk much anyway, is frightful.

What’s even better about Chong and Alice is that they like fooling around with Day and Dee so that leaves me free. To eat my Caesar’s salad, to chill, or to enjoy looking at my kids interact with other adults for a change.

yellow-faced housewife

I’ve never been a glamour puss.

I was told that back in school, a guy (aren’t they all “guys” back then?) who fancied my face, decided that my daily ratty get-up of gray T-shirts plastered with university slogans designed by bad undergrad artists, same pair of jeans, slippers (yes, I wore slippers to school) and fly-away uncombed ponytail was too intimidating for words.

KK wisely decided that I’m low maintenance.

Even then, I have to pronounce that this has to be my most pathetic fashion moment.

This meaning my time here in Sydney.

My housewife’s uniform consists of three T-shirts which I change every two days – one yellow, one red and one white – jeans in the day and grubby gray track pants at night.


Shoes, I only wear my New Balance track shoes when I go out. Perched on my head-with-the-bad-haircut is the ugliest pink sunhat I’ve ever seen. But hey, it was cheap.

My intention is to throw away everything when I go back home so I don’t have any luggage. Clearly, I’m not going to buy anything either, so bollocks to Sydney’s purportedly wonderful shopping.

Sad, sad, sad.

I feel so much a part of the brigade they call the “huang lian po”.

defiance

It’s that dreaded time where Day takes a deep breath, musters up all the ugliest traits he can think of and spews it all in our faces.

When at least once a day, I look to KK and seriously ask: Should we consider the cane? For us, the cane is a truly terrible thing so to think about it, well.

Some call this time the Terrible Twos.

It’s been brewing and growing filthier over the last six months.

It’s nothing very bad, really. He isn’t pushing other kids or poking things in his sister’s eyes or pelting food on the floor.

To be fair, by and large, I must say he’s quite a good boy and he’s a paragon of virtue maybe half the time.

But the other half, we want to kill him.

He is defiant, unreasonable, stubborn, selfish, inconsiderate, whingy and consistently wrong.

A sampling: He shoves his sister so she falls over, head-butts her, does a flying leap over her head when she is lying down, refuses to eat the food that I prepare after so much work, runs all over the apartment between bites of food, scratches all the CDs, hogs the laptop and refuses to let his papa use it for work.

Just the other night, KK ended up in the ridiculous situation of having to beg Day to use the laptop. As Day sat on his throne (two telephone directories on the chair) surfing the Net, KK repeatedly said he needed the laptop for work.

“Five minutes, Day, I promise, you can have it after five minutes, promise. Let papa use the laptop for five minutes.”

The boy refused to budge, whined and screamed at any attempt to remove the laptop.

KK came to look for me, in bemused exasperation: “This is ridiculous.”

I went out and gave him a verbal blasting about respect and hierarcy, half of which he probably didn’t understand, which made him sob. As much as I’d like to think that this self-centred phase will pass, I can’t take chances.

As his trangressions build up, our patience dries up. It’s the steady accumulation of seeing him do what we told him not to for the hundredth time, and his refusal to listen to anything we say, that cuts short our fuse.

And he’s got this thing about not being able to wait. I know all kids cannot wait. But being subject to the incessant whining just makes my blood boil.

We are still not using the cane, or any object to hit him.

I try to refrain, even, from hitting him with my hands. Although today, I must admit, all sorts of black thoughts entered my head and all I could do was to steadfastly ignore him and leave him whining far far behind for his papa to settle, before I did anything violent. Generally, I am far more impatient and far more easily irritated by Day, than KK.

So far, however, the worst we’ve done is to shout at him.

And it makes me wonder, whether it's easier to hit, or easier to talk it out.

Anyway I only hope we are not doing wrong. I don’t want to botch him up so he grows into a spoilt self-centered little brat. This character development module of parenting is probably the most important of the lot but also the hardest.

eric carle's pancakes

Strange but true: I learnt how to make pancakes from a children’s book.

It looked too irresistibly easy. Somehow, when the recipe appears in a children’s book, it just seems so simple.


Moreoever, the illustrations in Eric Carle’s “Pancakes, Pancakes!” were irresistibly appealing.


The recipe per se comes from the famed illustrator himself, who notes in an afterword that if he hadn’t made a living from drawing children’s books, he would have become a chef.

Just a cup of flour, a cup of milk and two eggs and he swears it makes yummy pancakes.

We tried it out this morning, Day and I, while Dee and her papa were snoring away. (Oh it had to involve Day. He’s the one who’s been hearing about how the boy in the book goes around collecting the ingredients for him mama to cook the pancakes.)

He got a real kick helping me to pour the flour and milk and eggs into the bowl before stirring the batter with a spoon.


Me, I got a big kick from watching my batter sizzle into a paper-thin crepe in the butter-lined frying pan.


A dash of maple syrup and Day, fork in hand, grabbed his plate before pronouncing (like the boy in the book): “Mama, I know what to do now!”

So do I. I have visions of pancakes with banana and ice cream and strawberries. Suddenly, my culinary universe has expanded.

* My camera is still spoilt. Pictures taken with small and not-so-good camera.