boo!

There was a little note from Day’s teachers two weeks ago, stapled into The Communication Book.

“The month of October has a special day for the children – Halloween! A “haunted” room will be set up with sound effects. You are welcome to send a costume to school with your child that day. It should be a fun day and please do not forget their little baskets for their trick-or-treat rounds.”

Such a completely archaic and non-Singaporean event, but boy, Day made a big deal out of it!

The last few days he had been going on and on about the Halloween party, going trick-or-treating and dressing up as a yellow ghost.

And so, today, he went to school as a Yellow Ghost.



Amongst his friends with their witch’s hats and fairy wings, I don’t think anybody else slashed a smelly unwanted bolster case to make a ghost. As he said himself - I’m not sure whether out of pride or embarrassment - “I’m the only ghost”.

interaction 7

Seventh and last installment!

I usually hate posting videos because they take so long to upload and view, but how else to show dancing?



Context: The two grooving and twisting to Chubby Checker. “Let’s Do the Twist” happens to be a song Day is performing for his school show and so I played it on the piano to see his moves. Dee falls in love with the song too and does her usual clumsy but very enthusiastic writhing.

She usually models her brother.

Anyway that’s how we spend part of our afternoons. Me on the piano, them doing ridiculous things. They inspire each other.

interaction 6

Context: Two bathtubs. But they always insist on squeezing into one. Usually it’s Dee who clumsily clambers over and forcibly squashes herself between her brother’s legs, facing him. Then follows nearly 30 minutes of bliss (for us) as they do their bathtub thing, unsupervised.

It’s lots of pouring water here and there (all they have by way of bathtub toys are mugs), collecting soapy froth and drinking their soup, and changing bathtubs.

Day stirs up the bubbles with his hands.

Dee: “Bah-boolsh! Bah-boolsh!”

Day spots his genitals in a break in the foam.

Day: (giggling) Gu-gu bird!

Dee immediately reaches down and pulls. Both giggle.

Day: No! You cannot touch my gu-gu bird!

Dee spots Day’s nipples.

Dee: “Nan-nan!”

Day: “Yes, yes, you can touch my nan-nan but you cannot touch my gu-gu bird!”

interaction 5

Context: These two are QUITE good at sharing. About half the time. And while they have the occasional catfight over food, they sometimes feed each other.

Day: (excitedly running up the stairs with a bag of sweets straight after Dee woke up from her afternoon nap) “I got sweets for you!”

Dee: “Want weet. Weet.”

Day cheerfully hands her a jelly.

Day: “Eat, eat!”

Dee holds out her hand for another jelly while her mouth is still full.

Day: “Eat first. Mei-mei eat first.”

Dee: “Eat worst. Eat worst. Want. Want. Want! Day!”

Day gives up and hands her another two jellies.

Day: (looking at me) I share already. Can I eat another one? Because I’m a good boy?

interaction 4

Context: Afternoons, if I don’t bring the kids out, they mostly play together. A favourite is careening up and down the sloping car porch on their hand-me-down kiddie scooters (we have been very lucky on the hand-me-down front). Their conversations don’t make sense because it doesn’t.

* For the record, I actually sit there with my notepad taking down their nonsense in shorthand. I usually wear a ferocious frown because I have never actually bothered to note their conversations and in writing, it’s truly absurd; someone who isn’t really paying attention would think they sounded like they were conversing properly.

Dee: (holding out her hand) “Eye-peem! Eye-peem!”

Day: “I’m not selling ice-cream. I’m selling vases.”

Dee: “Eye-peem.”

Day: “Mei-mei is selling eye-peem. Eye-peem! Haha haha! Eye-peem! Mei-mei, throw your biscuit!”

Dee: (hurls her biscuit onto the ground) “Thow yee-keet. Thow yee-keet.”

She picks up her biscuit and starts sucking it like a lollipop. Day follows suit.

Dee: (singing) “Yi shan, yi shan, liang jing jing…”

At this point I give up and get myself a biscuit.

interaction 3

Context: We have been trying to get Dee to shit into the potty, to no avail. Truth be told, we don’t try very hard. But Day likes getting in on the act. The siblings are mutually interested in each other’s toilet affairs.

Day: “Mei-mei, you must cover your eyes and close your mouth and say nggg-nggg!”

Dee: (dutifully parrots her brother) “Nggg-nggg!”



Day: “You must not ng-ng in your pamper. You must ng-ng in the potty.”

Dee: “Potty.”

Day: “If you ng-ng on the floor, gong-gong will be very angry.”

Dee: “Potty nggg-nggg.”

Having strained himself in the demonstration, Day suddenly decides he needs to go too.

Day: “Mei-mei, come and see me! Come! Come!”

Dee lifts herself off her potty (nothing has emerged) and, bare-bottomed, scampers into the toilet.



Dee: (peering inside) “Yee-yee! Yee-yee!”

Day: (craning his neck to look behind and below) “Look mama, it looks like a sausage!”

Dee repeatedly jiggles the flush. The turd goes down. Day laughs uproariously.

Dee: “OK no more.”

interaction 2

Context: Every night after dinner, brother and sister go racing up and down the living room. Not much conversation here but they have a spanking good time.

Day: One… yellow… GO!

(His starting call is a throwback to the Sydney kid-friendly soccer-mum and the game she used to play with him. Now he always assigns himself a number and colour before he shoots off the mark)

Dee: Go! (she starts off 5m behind, ends up 10m back by the end of the race)

Lots of laughing and squealing and then it starts all over again. It doesn't sound like much but it's sheer joy watching them race and laugh themselves to sweat.

interaction 1

A 7-day record of sibling interaction: Day 1



Context: As always, Day and Dee fight to get into the same pram – the cheapo beige one on the left. As always, Dee screams, Day whinges, and we exhort the older one to be sensible and let his sister have it for the gray pram, after all, is the better one. He, unconvinced (as always), very sulkily gets into the gray.

Day: “I don’t like mei-mei anymore. I like my second baby.”

Dee: (blithely blowing raspberries) “Pffft.”

Day: “It’s not funny. Not funny at all. I throw you in the dustbin. I throw you in the dump truck.”

Dee: “Pffft.”

Day: “I buy a yellow gun and then I’ll fire at you. Zh-zh-zh-zh-zh.”

Dee: “Pffft.”

go-go bambini

What Go-go Bambini is: Huge indoor kiddie playground. Not an open-spaced one. But a maze of nets, rubber and slopes.

Day went absolutely nuts.

Over the purple spiral tube of a slide (pitch-black inside) which went down two thrilling storeys. Over the ball pit. Over the thousand and one padded obstacles for him to climb all over and throw himself against. Over the holes for him to climb through.

Dee took a bit longer and then she was mostly running at the very dim first storey (it’s like a multi-level cage with lights only at the top which clearly cannot reach the ground floor).



When I saw the black rope against the side of the slippery red slide – meant for children to pull themselves UP the slide – I knew these guys had it right.

I mean, every kid loves to go up the slide the wrong way.

The pinch: $15 for Day, $6 for Dee. That pays for unlimited play on weekdays, one hour on weekends.

The location: Tanglin Village, Dempsey Block 8. For me, $15 in a cab one-way. I’m not bringing the kids there for a long time more.

More minuses: Even on a weekday morning, there were boatloads of kids and parents pouring in. And I perspired after about 15 minutes chasing after Dee. (Day, as usual, was out of sight)

Most traumatic was going down that pitch-black spiral slide with Dee in my lap, camera around my neck, and landing with a bump at the bottom with my feet smacking on a boy’s butt.

But did I saw Day went absolutely nuts? It’s one of those things which, in my dim recollection of being a kid, is probably a fantasy come true.

ex-reporter girls

There we were, three ex-hip and happening (we hope) reporter girls, stepping into Jones the Grocer for the first time in our lives, balancing babies on our hips; very much aware that just five years ago at least one or two of us could have written about the place, gotten a plate of free food from the enthusiastic PR, or at least been there several times simply by virtue of it being a cool hangout.

An Eyeball Mummy’s outing, we called it.

The last time we worked together was on the now-defunct and very stressful newspaper Project Eyeball.

Now, brought together again by the fact that we have borne children, we are no less stressed by our offspring.

And honestly: Three reporters turned full-time mums from Eyeball’s small pool of writers. How rad is that. Then again, it’s our profession. It’s near-impossible to be a good reporter and a good mum. One has to go.

There’s June; the girl I probably haven’t seen since the day they announced they were closing our newspaper in 2001, and her two-year-old Sean.



This is one incredible woman. I can’t quite get over the fact that the day she found out she was pregnant, she dropped cigarettes, dropped booze, dropped partying, dropped a hot job interviewing celebrities and writing bitchy stories, dropped fashionable clothes and devoted herself wholeheartedly to being a full-time mum.

And a mum filled with such parenting ideals! Organic food, regular early sleep times, breast milk even at two years old.

And then there’s Clara and the very adorable Ju-Ju – about Dee’s age - whom Day took a shine to. (Well he did wipe Ju’s dirty cream-stained hand with a serviette and patted his cheek.)



Clara, a self confessed “newspaper hack saved by housewivery” is another ex-party girl and brilliant writer-turned-dedicated mum who has no qualms scooping up her son’s poo from the bathtub and whose husband I am writing articles for so I shall not say too much haha.

Here’s Ju-Ju, whom Day liked rather a lot.



It’s funny, the choices we make. I doubt if anyone who saw us way back in 2000 would have said we would be (well, reasonably good) full-time mums. But I think we are doing good.

The kids: Following an outing to Gogobambini (an indoor kid’s playground next door; we would never have chosen to bring the kid to Jones otherwise), they enjoyed Jones too. High ceilings, concrete floors, huge spaces, food everywhere for the taking at floor-level. What’s not to like? I doubt the other chi-chi diners like their screaming and running, though hey, I honestly tried my best.



Food, pricey and healthy, which means they would have preferred Macs. Like muffin, dry and full of real green apple and not very sweet and both Day and Dee kept spitting out the huge apple chunks.



Dee later developed a particular tendre for the raw wagyu beef on display and stood there for a good 10 minutes, quiet, out and sight and completely by herself, leaving her streaky finger marks all over the glass. I found out later she was poo-ing.

angel day

Once he passed three, the excitement died down.

Day, a mini-adult, has reached a point where his development is very subtle and hardly noticeable; everything is happening in his mind and who’s to know when one day, he comprehends the meaning of, say, greed?

The point being that it’s been hard blogging about Day. The changes are minute and spaced out. Which is why I suppose there are so few blogs about primary school children than babies.

For another, his sister is at a point where her development is exploding in front of us, every day, and in the light of her fireworks display, we hardly notice him.

Plus, the girl is truly a character. When she’s good, she is all sweetness and when she’s bad, she is hell. And these are the people who get all the attention, isn’t it? Not the nice ones.

And Day, my angelic Day, is truly a Nice One.



He has morphed into a consistently sweet, likeable, very obedient boy who is always telling us with genuine affection that he loves us. Who spontaneously hugs us and likes to holds our arms before dropping off to sleep. (Dee pushes us off her bed)

He’s the sort of boy I can walk along the road with, without holding his hand, and even if he’s behind me I know he will keep sensibly on the pavement.

He’s the boy I can trust to pack up his toys and art stuff after he’s done with it.

He’s the boy I can trust to look after Dee.

Sometimes I wonder if the two were born this way, or if it was a result of nurture.

miscarriage

Not me.

It is however incredibly sobering when a pregnant friend who is as far gone as me suffers a miscarriage.

At over four months, her water bag suddenly bursts, she is rushed into hospital in an ambulance where she proceeds to give birth before then enduring another dilation and curettage under general anaesthetic to scrape out the remains.

Then she, incredibly brave, chooses to see the baby which she only finds out there and then, was a boy. It would have been her first-born.

Three days later, in what is a biologically cruelly insensitive reminder, her breasts fill up with milk.

We would have given birth within days of each other.

She tells me, that after the episode, she has never wanted a baby more.

How I take my babies for granted. How I take #3 for granted.

the children's garden

Little bit of adventure when I decided to hoist the two kids to the Botanic Garden’s brand-new Children’s Garden (1st in Asia some more!) on a sweltering hot afternoon, straight after their afternoon naps.

I was feeling particularly energetic that day - It’s the kind of thing that one can only do when feeling very VERY perky and wide-awake and Not Tired At All. Happens maybe once a week. Or a fortnight.

Ten minutes of quickly cutting up ham sandwich triangles, grabbling a bunch of bananas, filling up a tureen with cold honey and packing a change of clothes for the kids and we were off in the taxi.

So after four hours in which I was sapped deader than a flattened cockroach, conked out at 830pm and woke up 12 hours later feeling hungover (horrible headache and bad taste in the mouth), here’s what I will remember next time I go.

ONE
None of the taxi drivers know where the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden is. Not the first driver who brought me to the wrong entrance, nor the second driver who eventually drove me from the wrong entrance to the right entrance for $3.30 (it took five minutes of instruction from the receptionist before he got it).

Sure, it’s possible to walk to the Children’s Garden from any other part of the garden, but with 2 kids in boiling weather? Any more than 400m is hell.

Anyway the garden entrance is about 100m to the left of the old NIE running track. At Kheam Hock Road. Something like that.

TWO
Perhaps the trees haven’t had time to grow but it really wasn’t very shady. Or maybe it was just super hot that day. I don’t know, I was too busy to look around. Must go on a cool day.



THREE
Change of clothes is essential. The Bugis Junction-like fountains are right at the entrance and every kid will want to play. They will also want to play with the very pretty tin watering cans provided – pump water and then water the plants – only there are less than five cans. Each kid will want to hold onto it for as long as they are there. So no chance. Prepare to put up with whiny kid going “But I want to water the plants! Mummy help me!” (like Day) Or go really early. Or be the ugly Singaporean and snatch from a kid.

FOUR
Must have transport devices for ALL kids. Me, I only brought a pram for Dee.

Yes, Day can walk but he happened to fall and scrape his knees and hands rather badly. So there with the sun’s rays beating down upon us all, Day screamed piteously “But there’s blood! Mama I can’t walk! I can’t! It’s so painful!” while scared-of-the-sun Dee squirmed in the pram, shielded her face and whined “Hot! Hot!” I stood still as a statue wondering why I had brought this upon myself. Didn’t know what to do.

For a while I entertained the notion of seating Day on my shoulders and pushing Dee in the pram – like in Sydney – but laden with #3, I thought better not.

In the end my brave boy ended up hobbling the rest of the way as we went v-e-r-y slowly. No choice mah.

FIVE
Do not pack food or prepare for picnics.

Food is not allowed in the Children’s Garden. Makes sense, seeing how children eat.



There is a kid’s café outside, however, with the cutest kid-sized wooden tables and rattan chairs. Food, including food from home, can be eaten there.

My two, however, dumped my ham sandwiches and insisted on having the chicken nuggets / French fries / fish and chips / sausages / pizza / hot dog rolls / ice cream from the café. Dammit.

SIX
Not a good idea for me to go alone with the two kids in future.

There are very fun but potentially dangerous set-ups, like the Treehouse, which is not a house built ON a tree but a two-storey house built AROUND a tree with slides from the second floor.



Many a time I lost complete sight of Day and I know he was doing something dangerous on the plethora of exciting activities around the treehouse. Stuff that would require supervision at least – like climbing a spider web to the second floor.



OVERALL
Not so good for a solo mummy trip (1 kid would be fine though). It is slightly less dangerous than trying to bring the kids swimming on my own, but infinitely more risky than the beach / Ikea / going to the library / going to other people’s homes.

Which is quite sad because KK will only be free on the weekends when it will be swarming, and we both hate crowds. Which means the Children’s Garden won’t be on our list of Frequently-Visited-Places.

dee on canvas

Dee as seen through my sister-in-law's eyes, acrylic paint on canvas. Beautiful painting. Lucky lucky girl.

Now the only member of the family not to have been immortalized in paint is Day.

For KK and me are blessed to have a wedding portrait done for us by my super artist friend Puay Koon.

fairy for real

* No we didn’t pierce her ears. Those are stickers which she liked the look of. “Mei mei”, she pronounced.

In another drastic about-turn, my daughter’s Feminine Side suddenly decided to pop it’s head out several weeks ago.

She is so radically different from her clumsy, beetle-eating, dirt-loving oafish persona of old it makes my jaw drop. She is downright Gu-Niang; still plump but Gu-Niang. A fleshy pink little Venus.

How exactly?

* I am hard-pressed to define or describe her head flips or turns of wrist; but suddenly, as her motor skills improve, she is behaving more like a little lady. Her movements are never punchy, twitchy or even quick. She moves slowly, sometimes clumsily, but with a certain intentional grace. She even eats like a gu-niang, very carefully and slowly swiping up the morsels around her mouth with one finger before sucking it clean.

* She has very particular tastes in her clothing (although nudity is still her thing). She sees something she likes in a pile, zooms in, picks it up and pronounces “Nice!” before commanding someone to put it on her. After which, she goes straight to the cupboard to view herself in the mirror. Sometimes she tells herself “Mei mei!” (pretty pretty!) Mind you she stares at herself for a good minute, which is an eternity for a baby. She has a thing for dresses and she hates wearing her brother’s clothes.



* The other day the fan blew up her hair from behind and in a move which truly astounded me, she flipped it back the vainpot way we girls all used to (try to) do it; with a turn of the wrist and a toss of her head. Oh so hiao!



* Things which never irked her before, irk her now. Like the archetypal bimbo, she sees a bug, beetle or an ant and she whines: “Oh, oh, whazh dat? Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Walking backwards away from the offending object, her “oh no’s” escalate in volume until I kill or get rid of the offensive insect.

* Lots of things make her whine: “Ow ow” in a very petulant way. Cutting her nails. Combing her hair. Pulling her arms through spaghetti straps. Silly little things.

* She is dead finicky about dirt. A smudge on her hand and she goes “Issue!” (meaning tissue). Leave it unwiped and she goes round holding her hand straight out like a stink bomb, plaintitively calling to anyone who is within earshot to pass her a piece of issue. And after she eats she likes to grab issue to swipe at her mouth. To think she used to poke her head into Day’s pee pail. Oh, and on that point, she must eat ice cream-on-a-stick with a spoon. She doesn’t like licking it and messing up her pristine mouth.



* She is not a run-around-the-house and mess-everything-up tomboy. What she loves best is when she spots a bed with loads of pillows, for she then flings herself onto the bed, climbs onto the mountain of pillows, buries her face in them and luxuriates. Like a pampered princess.

I wonder how long this phase will last. It’s all fun, though! And I daresay it might well last; the Vain Gene might have skipped a generation and gone straight from my mom to her.

maid or car?

Funny question I have been pondering.

Given a one-off choice between a domestic helper and a car – a very real issue for us since we have little money and 3 kids (hence probably requiring one or the other sometime in the near future), what would we pick?

I’ve been asking. People who have both, that is, which they would rather give up.

Perhaps their answers may illuminate my cloudy mind.

I have asked 3. Funny. All said they would rather have…. the MAID.

Two of them, friends my age with at least 2 young kids each, took a l-o-n-g time to mull before declaring that while they can perhaps take public transport, they will truly flounder without their trusty Filipino / Indonesian helper. It’s the kind of situation where, when the maid goes home for a holiday, everybody has to take turns taking leave and suffering.

The third, my mum, didn’t even hesitate. In a heartbeat she declared she would take the maid anytime. Because there is “so much work to do when I come home from work” but she can easily take buses or taxis to go out.

I get their point: The loss of a car is less of a sacrifice – time and energy-wise – than the loss of a maid.

The fourth person I asked confidently stated that he would take the car. But ah, my beloved KK, now suffering from pangs of having to take public transport every day, and perpetually complaining whenever we have to flag a cab at peak hour with the kids in the hot sun, is just dying for a vehicle of his own and that’s about all that’s on his mind.

When I hrmph-ed, he blustered: “We can do the household chores what.”

And I could then only roll my eyes. Coming from a man who never puts back things the way he found them, that’s a good one.

Plus Sydney nearly killed me. I was frankly a BAD messy housekeeper who cooked blah food. Add one more kid into the equation? Plus me having to freelance write, do interviews and play for music gigs in the process?

I can’t be that woman.

So I guess what I seem to be saying is, when we move out of my folk's place, between a maid and a car, perhaps I would take the maid.

My cloudy mind has been illuminated.

* I do have my reservations, though. For someone who grew up with maids from the day she was born, I have this odd resistance to hiring one. Misplaced pride, perhaps, in my own ability to take care of my family. Ah, what’s wrong with me. I want everything the way I want at the expense of my wellbeing, that’s what.