father and son

If there is a point when a son draws closer to his father, Day’s is now.

It didn’t happen overnight, nor is it blindingly obvious.

Just little things.

Like wanting to follow his papa everywhere – especially on “man-to-man” trips to Starbucks for a latte and a fruit punch.

Actually I really can’t quite put my finger on it.

It’s just a feeling that I, having been with him ad nauseum since the day he was born, have been drawing further away from him these few months even as he is drawing closer to his papa.

Oh he still wants me all the time, and nothing makes him cry more than getting separated from me.

It’s just his demeanour when he’s around his papa, somehow: Like he’s happier, more relaxed, more himself.

Why is it happening?

Something I read before said little boys, at his age, start looking for role models. Male role models. If not from TV or mass media then (preferably) their daddies.

What is probably more pervasive, however, is the fact that I am drawing closer to Dee. More accurate to say she is demanding more of me.

Out of every 10 minutes, eight of them I am attending to her whims while Day serenely does his own independent thing.

Not to forget I spend every morning with her while Day is in school and that ups the stickiness factor.

Quite naturally, when KK comes home, Dee still sticks to me but Day then has someone to ally himself with.

Nothing wrong with that, really. That Day is becoming closer to his papa. I wouldn’t have married a man I didn’t want my son to be like (OK barring SOME things).

But inherently, there is residual sadness. That my beloved first-born is no longer completely mine, that I am no longer his best friend, that I am not necessarily the person who knows him best.

It’s all good though. Letting go is always good.

that used car seat

We had been dying to get a car seat so we could jail Dee in it. Scream all she can, we don’t intend to let her out, for safety’s sake.

Unlike her compliant brother who sits quietly in his seat with his safety belt, she monkey bars off the side handles (the ones where you hang clothes from), lies down on the floor mat yelling “help” in an attempt to get me to rescue her and slithers from back seat to front seat.

This happens all the time whenever we take a taxi, only when she’s in a taxi she likes to stick her head near the taxi driver’s left elbow to say “Hi” - repeatedly - until she gets a reaction.

Very dangerous.

I went about trying to get a Used Car Seat, since used car seats are not usually BAD car seats. Just that the kids have grown out of it. Two ways:

* Online (mocca.com)
* I stuffed about 60 little scraps of paper into my neighbour’s mailboxes, imploring for a used car seat

In a day, I got two responses, one from each channel.

Neighbour was selling a Mothercare car seat for $50. Steel frame, very heavy, very sturdy, but the cloth seat was deep and Dee refused to sit in it. It looked a bit prison-like – which is what it is, come to think about it.

Online Stranger was selling three car seats (from her, her brother and sister), ranging in price from $40 to $45, and one booster seat.

I decided to go with Online Stranger, so I could also get a booster for Day. She asked for $65 for both.

We got the seats, a good long drive away in Bukit Timah.

Brown Booster, which actually came to $20 (since car seat is $45) had a scrape in it but was functionable.

Car seat looked fine. Came with a removeable handle / tray thing in front.



We installed it in the car and what do you know, both kids fought to get in it. Day, screaming, was yanked out of the car seat against his will and plopped on the booster in the front seat.

Then after we drove off and got on the expressway, I realized to my horror: The damn safety belt, the entire reason for the car seat, was stuck. We had not yet placed the straps around her. She was just sitting in the seat.

Damn Damn Damn.

No amount of tug-of-war between me and KK could unstick the clasp.

I was black-faced.

We returned the seat the next day and got our money back. Straight after, we got a brand new one for $164, with a clasp that is on the stiff side but heck.

I don’t quite want to go through all the trouble of trying to procure another (acceptably safe) one, going to collect, testing it out, paying. Mostly because we couldn’t stand another trip with her doing her car stunts.

The verdict: She loves it. She’s actually quite a car seat girl. Apart from a few short crying jags on the longer trips, she settled straight into it with nary a whimper and doesn’t want to get out when we reach our destination.

dragonboaters lost

Honestly that’s all that’s been on my mind.

Five hale and hearty young men in their prime, lives snuffed out in the Cambodian waters after choppy waters capsize their dragonboat.

While I may have been more excited about the news value of an unfolding daily page-turner several years ago, I, with a son now, am sincerely horrified.

My heart goes out to the mums of the five 20-something (and one 30-something) men. One of the men was apparently an only child.

The sight of their weeping mothers on TV now makes me want to weep.

My boy, watching the news telecast with me, prances around, echoing words he hears from the TV. “DEAD? Why are they DEAD? They cannot swim?” even as I ferociously “shhhhhhh!” away.

To KK, I ask: But they are such strong young men. If they just fell out of a boat and if the waters were not choppy to the point that the races were cancelled, what’s the problem?

To which he - who once fell off his windsurf board far out at sea and thought he would die when he got dragged and trapped under a boat – said: “I can completely understand. They were probably fatigued and dead tired. To suddenly capsize, they would be disoriented and wouldn't know which way was up or down. And if they gasped and took in a mouthful of water, even worse.”

I reckon the parents of those men would be asking the same questions: How the hell does something so seemingly innocuous – falling into the sea - turn out so deadly?

yellow fellow

Day adores yellow. It’s his all-time favourite colour, and a recent occurrence in that he never had a favourite colour before until now.

He loves his yellow shirt, his yellow shorts, goes for yellow food, yellow drinks, yellow straws, yellow forks, yellow bowls, his first watch is yellow, he’s in love with lemons because they are yellow. Sucks them like there’s no tomorrow.

He also named his toy dog - a white one which was actually gifted to Dee – Lemon so it sounds yellow though it isn’t yellow.



I think it started because his favourite Wiggle, Greg, is the Yellow Wiggle.

humongous girl... 3 years on

If anyone remembers that humongous baby girl I wrote about – Day’s cousin from China who weighed 9 kg at 6 ½ months – we just saw her again.

And how she has changed!


6 ½ months old Qiying


3 ½ year old Qiying

Such a slim, pretty, feminine, not-at-all aggressive and shy creature, who would have imagined upon seeing her at 6 ½ months that she would turn out so?

Which is how I suppose some adults end up looking completely different from how their parents imagined they would.

I still find it remarkable though. The changes.

And I am curious if Dee will slim down the same way! Not that Dee is anywhere near as pudgy as she was.

first family car

The steering wheel has always been one of my biggest mountains.

Me and driving, I’m probably predisposed to being one of those Lady Drivers people peer at whenever they pass by and scold “@)^)(#@%”.

Anyway I would not really know, for since I passed my driving test over a decade ago, I hardly hit the road. I gave up after:

a) I hit someone else’s licence plate in the Parkway Parade carpark
b) I stopped out of sheer terror after I got lost, at the side of an expressway no less, trucks whizzing past me, my head on the steering wheel, as I wept and considered calling a tow truck
c) I got so panicky about changing lanes in a jam, I actually rolled down the passenger window and desperately hand-signalled the driver to give way, while the incredulous man watched me moving forward while my eyes were on him and off the road
c) I realized that every time I drove I developed tension headaches, got chills throughout the entire journey and sore thighs – oh because my legs were so tense

Actually b, c and d all happened during the same journey: One incredible instance when I was supposed to drive KK’s company car and follow him back home (I did not know the way) just after he had collected his new Harley Davidson bike. I lost sight of him and turned onto an alien expressway.

When I eventually found my way to his home, I opened the door, collapsed white-faced on the ground, suffered a throbbing stress-related headache for a day and swore I would never drive another car.

Well well.

Don’t kids change everything! We've got ourselves a family car - not ours in name, but ours to use!



A year-old black Suzuki Grand Vitara (it’s one of those big jeep things with a fifth wheel stuck behind) came our way two weeks ago, courtesy of KK’s friend who was posted to Algeria and needed someone to car-sit.

KK said yes because of the kids. And no way we will get to use a car for such a steal (we only have to pay half KK’s friend’s car loan).

We’ll have it for two l-o-n-g years (after which we might well think of the car as a NECESSITY and have to get one… so much for my Car vs Maid dilemma!)

It’s actually meant for weekend use, and for me to drive the kids around on weekdays. No point KK driving it into town for work; though parking at the work site is free, there’s ERP and petrol (expensive!) to think of.

Safety-wise, it’s much better for the kids to be strapped securely into their car seats than to careen around a taxi.

How was it?

The first few times, the car terror symptoms returned with a vengeance – chills, headaches, tense thighs.

It didn’t help that KK was completely un-understanding.

Honestly, the night he was displeased because I picked him up 200m past the spot where he was waiting – mind you it was my first time driving at night EVER, to a NEW PLACE I HAD NEVER BEEN TO, and I had to LOOK OUT FOR HIM PLUS LOOK AT THE ROAD - I just went crazy. The ugliest I have been in a decade. I didn’t speak to him for days.

But then the car remained temptingly close. I had visions of driving the kids to the beach, to IKEA, to the library, for their afternoon outings.

Just nearby places with no ERP, with free (or cheap) parking, which would not consume too much petrol and hence be cheaper than a taxi ride.

So tremulously, I picked up the keys and went out driving at night solo. Just to get a feel for the roads and the car.

Happily, the car terror symptoms have gone. I don’t panic. That makes a huge difference. When I leave the house and when I return after driving, I remain the same and that’s saying something.

What seems to be a little sense of enjoyment is creeping in, when I cruise along with Mozart on the soundtrack. (Mozart because for some reason it keeps Dee quiet)

But I still don’t go further than 2 km beyond my place. And I try never to drive with KK in the car (he'll always get into the driver's seat). It'll sour marital relations.

Any strange place that I go to, I prefer to do a “rehearsal” at night when the roads are free of cars before venturing there in potentially busier traffic with the kids in tow.

Parking is abysmal. I can’t even drive head-in to a perpendicular parking spot – I take up 1 ½ spaces and need a lot of wiggling before I fit in. Thus I cannot park in between two cars - yet. Reversing in, cannot. Parallel parking may remain a dream forever.

Good thing about bringing them out at 3-4pm is most carparks are empty.

I have, for the moment, also scrounged up two Learner Driver triangular signs to put up on the windscreens, just so other drivers will be sympathetic.

But I’m optimistic. I can only get better.

As my mom (so much more encouraging as a an driving instructor than my too-posh hubby) always says: Don’t care what other drivers think. Don’t care if you are holding them up. Just be comfortable and Just. Go. Slow.

Anyway it's sort of nice having a nice car. That's material me speaking. *shudder* Wait till the bills come.

life changes

A busy weekend.

We got the car, we got the car seat, we went house hunting.

Fretted over rising inflation, still-rising property prices, the cost of the bloody car seat.

More, once I find the camera cable to download those photographs.

eating behind

Sometimes we let them eat at the back garden, near the wet kitchen, next to the manky yellow bin with all the rotting food scraps and where molecules of pesticide and orchid fertilizer permeate the air.

Sometimes in the back of my mind, I think: Better parents - even a maid - would never let the kids eat in such a dirty place.

But we don't care! It's novel! They love eating side-by-side!

#3 at 21 weeks: gender change

Ah. Just as Jody was first pronounced a boy then later became a girl, so it is with #3.

Confirmed via ultrasound today: #3 is a girl.

Day is going to be brother to two little girls.

MY REACTION

Chuffed. Absolutely chuffed. I wanted another girl and now I have her.

Despite the boy pronouncement earlier, the feeling that #3 is a girl has never quite gone away.

Reasons:
* I am significantly less hairy; legs, upper lip. While carrying Day, I was rather hirstute.
* It’s been a breeze of a pregnancy so far. Hardly any tiredness, nary a hint of nausea, except for the bump I’m perfectly normal. With Day, I remember being more zapped of energy, though it was manageable enough for me to carry on reporting duties and running around right up to my EDD.
* The bump is sprawling out over the sides; that is, my sides feel noticeably thicker. With Day, my tummy stuck out high in front and from behind no one could tell I was pregnant, even right up to the last month.

Silly reasons perhaps, but after having had a boy and a girl and having experienced two rather different pregnancies, this one has always felt girl-like.

Most of all, I have always felt that I carried a She. I have never been so sure with Day or Dee, but with #3, I am.

As I look at her on the ultrasound, she looks like my daughter.

A little girl who is still very calm, placid and unruffled, whom I only felt moving probably sometime near the 20th week (that is amazingly late for a 3rd time skinny mother) and who remained in the same position throughout the 20-minute ultrasound, to the amazement of the radiographer – “She still hasn’t moved!”

DAY’S REACTION

Disappointment. Abject disappointment. He wanted a little brother, now he remains our only son.

His exact words when I came home and told him: “I’m very very sad, I don’t want two mei-meis.”

I think he’s been so battered and abused by his terror of a willful sister, he is battle-scarred.

I think he’s afraid the two girls will step all over him. I think there is cause for concern.

KK’S REACTION

Glee.

For some strange reason, even after we were told we had a boy, our name discussion still went along female lines. (And for the record, we have never quite had so much disagreement over names. I think that we, knowing that this is our final child, is taking the name thing a little more seriously)

The exchange of names over the last few weeks, summed into one conversation, goes something like this.

Me: “My daughter’s name is Lauren.”
KK: “No, so gu-niang. I want her to have a strong name. What about Jessie?”
Me: “No way. Plain as hell. I want to call her Sonia.”
KK: “Makes her sound like a handbag. Matilda?”
Me: “She’ll be waltzing around all her life. OK her name is Mia.”
KK: “That’s better than Sonia.”
Me: “Ooops. The name has apparently something to do with bitterness.”
KK: “Cannot. What about Sydney?”
Me: “Ha? Corny or not?”
KK: “What about Yasmine? Same name as the baby girl we met at Coogee Beach.”
Me: “Hmmm.”

KK: “What if it’s a boy?”
[ silence ]

Summary of reactions to #3’s sex revelation: Happy parents, unhappy son. Daughter: No diff.

sweetness

Back home at 11pm after a three-hour orchestra rehearsal, a momentary flare of anger at seeing Day still up and bouncing (why didn’t his papa put him to sleep?) abates when his face lights up and he says he has something to show me.

He pulls me to the study room and extracts a piece of notepaper which he had carefully placed under a pile of books.

“For you, mummy!”



If it isn’t the sweetest thing, I don’t know what is.

It was combined papa-Day effort; papa with the marker pen, Day with the colour pencils. Our whole little family: Papa, mama, Day, Dee, the baby and a dog. (the latter two not yet in existence)

the white hair

OH. MY. GOD.

Day has a white hair right at the back of his head.

A singular thick, slightly wiry, strand of white hair which literally sticks out from the the surrounding smooth fall of black.

My 3 1/2 year old has a white hair. Which means he's inherited the White Hair gene from his dad and paternal grandma, which means he's going to have a graying head by the time he reaches secondary school.

As I gasped in horror, KK, looking rather pleased with himself, said: "What's wrong? Better white hair than no hair."

Well OK.

I hope Dee doesn't have it too.

pigtails

t

Such a silly thing: Taking pride in tying up a daughter's hair.

For the first time, I finally managed to sneak in two clips on her very fine slippery hair and swept up what I could into two very skinny pigtails. Just like me, she will never have a ponytail thicker than the width of her littlest finger.

My neighbour would chide me: Never tie up her hair or it will be permanently kinked and ugly! Let it grow so it all hangs straight and true, Cleopatra-style.

I'm still letting her hair grow but I'm thinking a China-doll bob suits my China girl best. Otherwise it all hangs in increasingly long, sweaty rat's tails.

money or time?

After almost exactly three years of no CPF (it’s usually after three years or so when people start thinking about changing jobs, no?) I am starting to have thoughts – Of whether it’s more important for my kids to have my time, or my money?

I asked Day. He actually said – horrors – that he wanted money. Of course, he’s never had a mummy who was absent the entire day, so he wouldn’t know what it’s like to be mum-deprived.

Still, I wonder, if I pour myself into career now (it’s not too late is it?) and earn potfuls, send them to full-day school, fill them to the brim with Shichida and Montessori and Adam Khoo, buy them humongous stimulating Lego sets, hire a maid to take care of all their needs so they can concentrate on their Education, bring them on eye-opening vacations to Disneyland, would they turn out better, more savvy, well-read, competitive, independent adults than if I were doing what I am doing now? (Now being none of the above, of course.)

That was what my folks did with me, to a certain extent. I know what I am. And frankly - very very frankly - it’s not a bad way to go. I’m a good, functionally intelligent girl.

Sometimes - and I know this is very politically incorrect and I wonder what my children will say in future if they knew what I was thinking now - I wonder if being a stay-home mum is over-rated.

For I know, as a definite fact, that one tried-and-tested (by my folks) way of raising a child – via exposure and education rather than parental presence – would not fail.

Of course, all sorts of other factors come in - Like how my parents, when not working, kept a firm rein on us, imbued is us all the right values, spent quality time. They did a great job. Their model is one I can follow because I have seen and experienced it.

Stay-home mum. Even though my heart tells me it’s the way to go, I always wonder if I am doing the best thing for my kids. The results are not tangible at all.

Anecdotally, KK had a stay-home mum. And I think even he would agree I had a better childhood, because my folks had the means.

Then what if the best thing for Day, Dee and #3 when they grow up is for them to go overseas? What if Day wants to, say, become a doctor and he cannot get into NUS and we have to send him overseas and we have no money? What, then?

It would clearly be better for Day if we had the resources to send him overseas, than for him to have to change his life ambition.

Most compelling of all - the only reason why I am able to do what I do now (abandon the job and throw myself into full-time motherhood) is because my parents can take care of themselves. Although I give them an allowance, they do not need it. I have that luxury of doing what I want because they have the moolah.

Then there’s also the little fact that in Singapore, the state machinery literally pushes mothers into the workforce, from pre-school subsidies to cheap maids. (One salary, two maids and more, that sort of thing). The Government just doesn’t want women to be stay-home mums.

Something funny I notice too, just anecdotally of course.

The daughters of housewives like to straddle both career and kids; or forgo the kids completely. I will never forget the NTU business intern I met who said “I would rather die than have a baby who will vomit on my Armani suit”, then told me her housewife mother, who complains to her every day about what a huge sacrifice she made for her children, completely supported her decision to go solo for life and told her NOT TO HAVE KIDS.

Conversely, the daughters of working mums like to dedicate themselves to mothering.

Is it that people just want for their children what they didn’t have?

See, I don’t have the least desire to send them for any enrichment classes, bring them on holidays or buy them expensive toys.

But I do want them to have my time and my full commitment (and that includes discipline and bathing and feeding and cleaning dirty diapers and bearing with screams and cries – no passing onto other people - even when I don’t feel like it).

So I wonder - For how long more will my heart hold out against my mind? When will pragmatism (the financial factor) win out against sentiment?

Do they need my time? Or my money?

Or perhaps it’s a matter of time now, money later?

working on sunday

How important Sunday has become for us: Our one day off in the entire week, when we are free from kids.

When we sneakily scurry off to my sister-in-law’s car at around 11am, I duck my head down in the seat as we pass them playing at the void deck with their paternal grandparents, and we drive off to kid-free oblivion.

Today, for the first time since we returned from Sydney four months ago, they could not take the kids. (In a way we have been spoilt by family since we returned!)

I was crestfallen. Seven – no, 13 since tomorrow is the start of another week – full days of kids. God, maybe even more if we can’t go next weekend. As much as I adore them, suddenly missing out on my few precious Sunday hours of piano playing, window-shopping, meeting friends is painful.

Here they are at the driving range watching KK do his thing, our second of three outings in a very tiring day.