incredulity

From the corner of my eye, I can see Dee, standing against a table, her face all screwed up in an affort to eject a massive clunker.

I go over: Come, mei-mei. Mummy will take you to the toilet bowl. I'll hold your hand and stay with you OK.

Dee: Unnngggh... NO!

The last week, she has been rejecting the toilet bowl. She's like that. Milestones reached are not necessarily reached for good. She backslides. At the moment, she prefers shitting into her pants.

Stars, rewards, threats, co-ercion, I've tried them all and nothing works - as usual.

I say: OK. Let Mummy take off your pants and I'll give you a piece of newspaper so you can shit on the newspaper OK?

I reach out for yesterday's news to spread under her feet.

Dee, reaching out for today's Straits Times: No! I want this one!

She refuses to shit on yesterday's news. I am stunned.

on moles and teeth

My children were born spotless.

(Apart from a faint gray Mongolian spot on their buttocks which has faded for Day and is fading for Dee and Lu)

Now I discover moles developing on Day.



The one on his left eyebrow – in the exact same position as mine – appeared a year or two ago.

The big one on the little finger of his left hand, I am astonished to say, suddenly appeared out of the blue a fortnight ago.

I thought it was dirt. Or an under-skin blood clot, created when his finger got caught in something.

It looks like it’s here to stay. KK also has a big mole on one of his fingers.

Moles, I find out, are pre-determined. Genes – and then later sun exposure - are what speckles us.

The boy’s got another two on his right thigh.

Dee hasn’t got any moles yet.

Another major physiological discovery: Lu’s teeth have come out to play!

balancing the scales

We have certain notions of what kind of children we want to raise.

What I'm thinking about now is HOW to do it: That all-important nurturing component.

And this particular aspect of the Nurturing Component has to do with balance.

In order to get Day, Dee and Lu to embrace a particular lifestyle or mindset, do I:

a) Push hard for a particular agenda (so hard they might tip over and go the other way?)
b) Do nothing and take it as it comes? (middle-of-the-road option)
c) Push them the other way?

Take smoking. We don't want our kids, when they are older, to smoke. Do I:

a) Keep telling the kids NOT to smoke, show them evil pictures of what smoking does to them, tell them of XXX who died from lung cancer caused by smoking?
b) Don't say anything. But if something came up - say someone we know dies of smoking-related lung cancer, I tell them factually it was caused by smoking
c) Give them a cigarette and force it on them. They hate it so much they swear it off.

Or outdoor sports. Both me and KK want our kids to embrace the outdoors and adore perspiration. Do I:

a) Keep bringing them outdoors, to the beach and to the parks, and make them physically exercise? (in the case of Dee, yes, I would have to MAKE her)
b) Bring them outdoors but don't force them to do anything. If they want to do, do.
c) Never bring them outdoors. On the rare occasion we do, they love it so much - because it's so RARE we do it.

Or healthy eating. Do I:

a) Keep getting them to eat healthy home-cooked meals and nothing else, even if they curse and swear.
b) Mix home-cooked meals and eating out.
c) Keep bringing them to eat out. 7 days of Macs, they may well swear off Macs forever.

At the moment, we are mostly b) people. Moderation in everything.

But I have been thinking about this.

The children of a friend - who used to bring them out every meal - love the simple home-cooked food my kids eat. They see the food on our kitchen table and they go: "So nice!"

My kids, who eat home-cooked almost every day, HATE home-cooked food. Eating at home is a matter of going throught the motions, a robotic mindless act. They eat to live at home. Outside, they live to eat. Would they appreciate the healthy fare they get at home (and I really want them to) if I forced disgusting oily fried hawker food on them every day?

And on the great outdoors. I bring Day and Dee out as much as I can. At the moment, they both don’t quite like it. As Day puts it ever so elegantly, as I gently prod him along at the East Coast Park: “Tsk, I HATE SWEATING! I’M ALL HOT AND SWEATY CAN’T YOU SEE?? I’M GETTING A RASH, MY SKIN IS ALL RED!” Vivocity is where he is happiest. It drives me nuts whenever they demand to go to a shopping centre.

So if I didn’t bring him outdoors at all, would he appreciate the rare occasion I did?

If I forced Dee to go camping and trouncing all over the jungles, would she grow to love it? Or hate it even more?

If I made Day go for swimming class - against his wishes - would he develop a lifelong love for it or would he drop it the moment he can?

If, in future, I gave the kids very little pocket money so they really have to work hard for it (or if we are dirt poor), would they grow up fully appreciating the value of money and fortunately (or unfortunately) wanting a lot more of it for themselves?

If I refused to hire a domestic helper so the kids have to grow up doing all of their own household chores, would they immediately hire their own helper once they are financially able to, because once upon a time they had to “suffer”? Or would they appreciate their independence?

43kg

My body is so consistent it’s not funny.

Each kid has cost me exactly 2kg. Exactly.

Pre-Day, I was 49kg.

Post Day, I was 47kg.

Post Dee, I was 45kg.

And now, post Lu, I am – I just weighed myself – 43kg. It's a new low.

I CANNOT afford to have another child or I will disappear (though the pregnancy weight gain will be welcome).

When carrying Lu, it took me well over five months to reach my desired weight.

Why am I losing all that weight?

I don’t know.

Could be once I stop breastfeeding, I will start putting on?

It’s starting to be an issue of concern.

I'm otherwise healthy, yes. But when I rest my elbows on the table my bones hurt. I can see the outline of my chest bones. My collar-bones, man: I think turtleneck long-sleeved tops are best for me now.

Between stuffing my face and making sure I have healthy eating habits, I’m stuck.

Midnight pizza? Will that help me to put on weight? How about loads of fried chicken? Boatloads of milk?

At the same time, with all the food horror stories I am assaulted with, I have half a mind to cut meat (all sorts of nonsense fed to the animals), dairy products (all sorts of nonsense added in or fed to the cows) and sugar (feeds cancer cells) altogether out of my diet. Be a raw food vegan.

I know I can, because I don’t crave food.

And yet I can’t because I will (for sure) lose weight.

At the moment, I do pig out.

Yes, I do eat whole pizzas at midnight. I finish the kid’s remainders at every meal. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner, supper. I eat like a pig but I don’t look like one.

I am seriously considering going to a Chinese doctor for some good old holistic treatment: Gimme some herbs to get fat, man. I’ll pay you for it. (my only concern is: What if it gets into Lu’s breast milk?)

It's literally 2 kilograms of my flesh for every child.

* No, I do NOT feel lucky at all. I do NOT want my hip fracturing sometime soon, I do NOT want my bones to be jutting out all over, I do NOT want to be sallow and shrunken.

grain of rice

One rice grain, so much pain.

A grain of rice from dinner sticks to Day’s cheek. KK says: “Day, either you eat that grain of rice or you throw it in the bin.”

Day picks the rice off and flagrantly flips it on the ground.

KK flips. Completely.

He rips Day up. Blusters. Shouts. Yells. “You better find the grain of rice and throw it in the bin or you are on your own for the rest of the night!”

From the kitchen, I wonder: What’s Dee done this time? I am astounded when I go out and realize it’s Day who is in in trouble.

Day, in tears but still rebellious as he roots around every bit of tissue or fluff on the car porch, mutters: “I know lah, I know lah.”



In principle I completely agree. Disobedience, littering, all punishable offences. But I don't I would have been QUITE as mad.

Dee, on seeing her always-perfect brother being ripped up like that, chooses an ally. She sidles up to KK and says: “I love you, papa.”

china milk witch hunt

What possible toxicities does this innocuous white sweet contain?

Yes, the melamine milk tentacles have probably got us too, all the way from China.

I find a packet of Wang Wang milk candies in the fridge, a gift. The small words: Made in China strike terror in my heart. I chuck it.

I recall Day and Dee eating a sweet or two from the bag everyday.

Of Dee recently popping her first White Rabbit Candy – just recalled by the food police in Singapore - into her mouth, happily chewing away at the milky white sweet, perhaps along with some melamine.

This is so insidious and utterly ridiculous, how a mass cheating attempt has resulted in such widespread food panic.

My mind wanders. I wonder if this is part of some greater evolutionary plan where the human race implodes and sickens its own children, to ultimately get rid of the human race. What’s next?

Impact of all this:

* We shun all edibles with any sort of ingredient from China.
* We read the food labels very very carefully.
* The children eat much less sweets
* We keep a cow in the backyard for milk

a reading place

I hope my kids find solace in libraries and bookshops, like I do.

My favourite haunt used to be the Times bookshop at the old Plaza Singapura, where mum would leave me everytime she went for a facial, and the old National Library.

(Damn Singapore and its irritating tearing-down of every place that has ever meant anything to me.)

The kids, books-wise, I bring them to a lovely little nook at the Siglap Centre, called The Reading Place.



Why we like it:

* It’s small.
* It’s empty (most times we go we are alone in the shop. At most there is one other customer)
* It’s cosy.
* It has an incredibly well-maintained and comprehensive collection of some great children series (unlike messy Borders), including Dr Seuss, Tintin and Mr Men.

For me, it’s where I get some great book presents for other kids.

For Day, he happily scoots to his favourite niche by the Thomas books (lower left-hand shelf). The anal me also notes that this is the only bookshop I have come across which bothers to arrange all the Thomas books by colour.



Dee is – to date – not a book girl.

Here she is, patiently waiting for gor-gor, hanging onto the packet of Pork Hot Dogs she had literally forced me to buy at the Cold Storage downstairs.



She’s Sausage Girl.

me and kids

6 months of lu

In our younger days, KK used to eat these round buns called Fun Buns. He’d pinch 2 little eyes and a little line of a mouth and I’d laugh at his fat Fun Bun faces with the tiny features.

Typically nowadays, Lu has a Fun Bun face.



Her lips disappear as she chews on her sore gums: Her whites (the lower two) are distinctly surfacing, though they have yet to break through.

As Day got to know Dee, Dee is now getting to know Lu and vice versa. (Dee, however, is nothing like Day was. She tolerates Lu, with the occasional hug. But more often than not, she fights with Lu for my attention)



Often, in the mornings when Day is at school, I pop the two girls down together and leave them alone. Lu often makes a grab for whatever Dee is having (payback time for Dee!).

Dee, however, usually grabs it back. “I don’t like her saliva” she says. Or sometimes, when Lu makes a grab for Dee, Dee says: “But I don’t want her to eat me, mummy.”

Lu also has a propensity to grab any of Day’s moving toy trains off the tracks. She seems them chug past and she unerringly pounces. I have warned Day: “The next one to throw and eat and spoil your trains will be Lulu.”

Other Lu developments in the past month:

She’s become a sitter. Lying face up or face down, she manages to find her way to the sitting position. It’s a bit weird when I try to put her to sleep and whenever I enter, she is sitting upright arms held out imploring me to pick her up. I, er, sort of push her over so she is lying down again which severely irritates her.

She has very distinct preferences. In ascending order of preference, it’s toys, wet wipes, plastic bags and newspaper. Anytime something she fancies (like newspaper) is pried from her grasp, she yells. I wouldn’t give her the newspaper though: Newsprint is toxic. The bags, I give. Two people have told me not to give her plastic bags. Why-ever not?



She passes things from one hand to another. As basic as it sounds, that is a developmental skill babies grow into.

Food-wise, there's been no progress. She hates rice cereal. Two spoons and she wants out. She hates oats. Two spoons and she wants out. I’m starting to think with regard to solids, she’s a two-spoons-and-out girl. Which is odd as Day and Dee embraced solids with passion. Oh and she also hates Similac.

She knocks-knocks-knocks. Everything, she knocks with a fist. Weird.

Sleep pattern: Still a mess. At night, however, she consistently wakes up something like three or four times. I don’t keep count because I just pop her on the breast and zone out. This is what the experts would call BAD sleep association: Letting her think she must have the breast to sleep. I should probably just let her cry it out so she gets the idea.

frank again

Another foot-in-the-mouth instalment from Day.

We are with a friend, someone whom we know has been trying to conceive and has tried everything possible, for years and years, with no success.

This is someone whom the kids are extremely fond of and vice versa. The couple are coming to terms with their childlessness.

Tonight, Day rubs it in. “How come you have no kids?” he suddenly says very loudly. “My papa and mummy have three!”

I have to say: Never before have me and KK ever talked about that couple, whether they have kids, how many kids they have, in front of our kids. Never.

Day has no inkling what it means to be trying for a child without success. Day has no idea whether our friend has children. Perhaps he just hasn’t seen any hence his pronouncement. In any case we have no idea where it came from.

Our friend is classically nice, without any awkwardness. “Wow he’s such a sensitive guy! Maybe he’s intuitive.”

I am speechless. As in, a gamut of things run through my head but I have no bloody idea what to say.

Later Day strikes again. He goes up to our friend and whispers in the ear: “You have no kids! My papa and mummy have three!”

And still later he adds: “If you have no kids I can go and stay with you.”

On the one hand, I am thoroughly embarrassed. On the other, I marvel at - and envy(!) - the ability of children to state whatever comes to their mind without having to give a damn what anyone else is thinking.

super sundays

Four hours a week on Sunday - my only time off from the kids (not including paying gigs and interviews) - I spend gloriously.

How wonderful it is to make music! Not just for paid gigs which are essentially soul-less, but getting together with like-minded people to throw ourselves into a magical music forest.

Since Pol Yee came back from Japan – where music recordings are all the rage – the Striiiings gang have been gathering to capture our musical souls in digital format.

We play on PY’s grand piano, bought in Japan and lugged up 23 storeys to his studio apartment where it takes up half the space, we sing lots of Jay Chous, we record for posterity.



I think: If each of my kids picked up one musical instrument, we can form a quartet.

How wonderful it is, for a family that can make music together after dinner every day!

Then perhaps we can attempt Pol Yee’s arrangement of Tian Chang Di Jiu, as played here by us and recorded on his laptop.

Piano: Pol Yee
1st violin: Luke
2nd violin: Sher
Viola: Chun

zhong qiu jie

a lazy eye?

See her eyes? Sometimes they don’t match.

Particularly when she is staring at nothing in particular, just looking into space and dreaming, her eyes sometimes don’t go in the same direction.

But then when I call her, her eyes snap back into place.

It’s not particularly serious, and doesn’t happen often enough for me to think it’s an issue.

But that little panicky kiasu Singaporean gan-cheong spider mother part of me is whispering: What if she has a lazy eye? What if her vision is permanently impaired if I didn’t do anything?

To date, I know of two people who suspected their occasionally cross-eyed children of having a lazy eye.

Both brought their 2-year-olds to the doctor. Both were told there was nothing wrong.

In both cases, the doctors told them: Sometimes Chinese kids appear cross-eyed when they are young because the bridge of their noses are still very flat and wide, but there is actually nothing wrong with the eye muscles.

Once the nose bridge raises, the eyes will appear normal.

On Lu’s vaccination to the polyclinic, I asked if they did these tests for toddlers and the nurse told me the only do it for 4-year-olds and above.

We’ll see how it goes.

twitchy lu

It’s official: Sweet docile Lu is over.

Somewhere between month 5 and 6, she’s become twitchy and relatively hyper, like somebody zapped her with Ecstacy.

From resting her head on shoulders / chests, she, now insatiably curious, swivels around looking at this and that.

From sleeping through the night, she wakes up three, four times.

From sleeping on her own in the cot, she now wails when she catches sight of the cot, clings to me furiously when I lower her into it and then tries her level best to climb / scream her way out of her bed prison. She ends up sleeping in very odd positions.



From being immobile, she now reaches out and claws at everything she sees – particularly paper and plastic bags which make her shiver and lunge forward in anticipation. I give her lots of NTUC bags. Towards her bona fide toys, she is completely ambivalent.

From being unaffected by everything, she yells when I remove her saliva-sodden plastic bag / remove the soggy wet bath towel from her mouth / deprive her of her oats.

Suddenly, we have been hearing a lot more of her. Her voice is oddly husky, like she is recovering from a sore throat.

As I haven’t heard it much before, I’m not sure if she is sick or if that’s her Real Voice.

One thing, though, is for sure: I am more in love with her than ever.

I love babes at 6 months, no difference with Lu.

I love that when she sees me now, she gifts me with the sweetest smile and holds out her arms for me to carry.

I love that she knows me, recognizes me and would have no one else but me.

I love that she is so incredibly soft and smooth with such a nice sweet head of hair.

frank

Two incidents tonight. At MacDonalds. Funny on hindsight but not when I am right there.

ONE.

At the counter I am served by a man with a woman’s voice. He’s a real bearded man alright, but with a genuinely high-pitched voice. Day saunters over. Man leans over and chirps: Hello!

Day: Hello! (turns to me) Mummy is this an uncle or an auntie? Why does he sound like a baby?

TWO.

As we are leaving MacDonalds, he brushes past the young man at the table next to ours, who has a stack of notes in front of him.

Day: (to the man) No studying is allowed in the restaurant.

I, looking in another direction, overhear what he says and I swing round. The man is trying very hard not to laugh. I am bug-eyed. I look up, left, right, to see if there is a sign somewhere which says no studying is allowed. Nothing.

Day: (again, very solemnly) You are not supposed to study in a restaurant.

cons-dee-pated

As tasteless as it is, I have to say it: We inherit our bowels.

Day shits like his dad and Dee shits like me.

Poor, poor girl.

Whilst Day is on and off the bowl usually in under 2 minutes – everything slides out in double-quick time – Dee labours. And labours.

Her Big Business trips are infrequent and irregular. Maybe once every 2 days or more.

Every time she goes, fear grips her.

To her credit, she’s finally wised up to the fact that she can no longer wear diapers and she has to go to the loo.

But oh, the fear!

She comes to me, usually with a funny little bow-legged walk like there is a huge stone up her ass, and whines: Mummy I want to ung-ung.

Up she goes onto the bowl.

She whines: Hold my hand! Hold my hand!

I do.

Most times, I sit on the toilet floor with her for 5 or 10 minutes or more.

Most times, the urge goes away when she sits on the bowl and we two wait, hand-in-hand.

When it comes again, she starts bouncing on the toilet bowl, and I do mean BOUNCE vigorously. She starts screaming, grunting, groaning.

“Ah! Eh! Ah!” Sometimes she screams out “Poon juice! Poon juice!” (meaning prune juice)

Beads of sweat appear on her forehead. She bounces for maybe a minute before suddenly, she freezes and grips my hand tight. Shuddering with the effort, she strains. Then we hear a very loud PLOP. I pop my head over and always, I see the huge sunken clunker, the same size as an adult’s.

Always, it’s always just one. She hops off the bowl and visibly lightened, she hops off.

Most times I am exasperated as she blasts my ears off. The one time, I burst out laughing because she sounded exactly like a woman in labour. To which she screamed: THAT'S NOT FUNNY! Which made me laugh even harder.

I clearly remember going through exactly the same ritual when I was a child. The paralysing fear whenever the urge came, making my mother hold my hands as I strained to eject boulders. Suppositories, prune juice, whatever. I had them all.

Poor me. Poor Dee.

snapshot

A pissed off moment: 3pm.

Just put Lu to sleep. She’s been difficult with her sleep nowadays. She squalls she yells she wriggles she writhes. It takes me a long time.

Throat scratchy, head heavy, eyes bulging with bags, I head upstairs to join Day (whom I put to sleep at 230) and Dee (whom I put to sleep at 1), praying for a brief respite. A short nap.

At the back of my mind is the 3 articles I have to complete, the 3 calls I have to make, to deliver the stories by tomorrow.

Heck.

I’ve done a hard morning of washing clothes, doing breakfast, cooking lunch, washing lunch dishes, picking toys, picking clothes, picking crumbs, putting up with Dee, putting up with Lu, bringing Day to and from school. All the life force has been sucked out of me.

I put my head on the pillow and the doorbell rings. It’s the Ridpest man.

He comes in, tools in hand, starts knocking all the walls and doors very loudly in a termite-finding ritual I have never understood and which I now officially hate.

Knock knock knock. Dee’s eyes flicker open. So does Day’s.

Oooh. Now I hear Lu squalling.

Stupid f*&k-ed up Ridpest man. Stupid dumb f*&k. I honestly want to cry. My longed-for 5 minute break (just 5 minutes!) foiled by the stupid Ridpest man.

fire phobia

She's still terrified of fire.

por por's 62

Today my mum turns 62.



A big-deal birthday in more ways than one:

* She has reached the official retirement age in Singapore
* After over 30 years of servitude to the Education Ministry (her first job), she gets her pension – just reward, I say, for sticking with such a hard taskmaster for so long. I couldn't do it.
* The day after her birthday, she stops drawing a fixed monthly salary and gets a daily-rated wage – which works out to 20% less than what she was drawing for the same number of hours. What? People are 20% less efficient once they reach 62?

In any case, she wants to go on working. No full-time grandmothering for this grandmother. She likes staying active, the work routine and the salary.

For the event, I decide to splurge because, well, she always treats herself and all of us on her birthday, and it’s about time at least one of her kids did something nice for her.

I give her a treat at the Crystal Jade Golden Palace at the Paragon Shopping Centre. It’s apparently the highest of the high in the Crystal Jade hierarchy of restaurants.

Why there?

Only the best will do! No lah. Mum, who literally knows every good Chinese restaurant around the island, said she had never eaten there.

Plus I was gastronomically delighted when Christian recently treated me there and I hoped mum would feel the same.

So, in the spirit of cousin Dawn – who lovingly uses food to document the milestones in her life – here’s Mum’s birthday meal.



Fish, oh fish. The beautiful Su Mei (humphead) which melts in the mouth, slides down the throat and shrivels up the wallet.
Mum’s verdict: Good. Tastes like soon hock.



Exotic shark bone soup, which is thick and stewy and full of flavour.
My brother Teng’s verdict: I don’t like it.



Nice and normal char siew et al but exquisitely done.
Verdict: Everyone (especially the kids) love it. Not enough.



Scallop broccoli (foreground) and salted egg-yolk prawn.
Mum’s verdict: The prawn is my favourite! (But the prawn and egg yolk are killers for her high cholestrol)



Beancurd.
Teng’s (the almost-vegetarian) verdict: My favourite.



Orh nee or yam-paste dessert.
Mum’s verdict: It’s good. (but not the best she’s ever had!)

The kids clearly know good food when they eat it and they ate more than they ever eat at dinner. Dee, as if she were starved, ate a whole bowl of plain white rice (we eat brown rice at home).



Day was clamouring for orh nee the entire dinner.

Once finished, we played the usual family game of: Guess The Bill.



Everyone – even mum, who is a restaurant veteran - was way off by a couple of hundred.

Everyone was horrified at the Su Mei (which took up nearly half the bill) and the shark bone soup ($30 per bowl).

Mum’s overall verdict: When we come back here next time, we won’t order the absurdly expensive Su Mei and stick to Soon Hock, which is cheaper but just as good. And forget the overpriced shark bone soup.

KK’s very sage comment: I would have been just as happy eating at Parkway Parade’s Crystal Jade. Whether food tastes good also depends on other things like the company, whether you are hungry.

For that reason, I suspect none of us enjoyed the food as much as we should have because the kids were there. Dee was screaming, Day was yelling for orh nee, Lu was pretty in red but cranky.



Plus Dad was having a bad stomach and the freezing-cold air-conditioning didn’t help. He stuck with the Su Mei and plain white rice, eating all the while wrapped up in his warm blanket (yes the restaurant provides blankets for cold customers)



My verdict: I want to make mum happy. She’s happy. I’m happy. But honestly? With my kind of anything-also-can palate, I’d be just as happy at the hawker centre!

the thomas show

One day Day saw a MRT train whizz past with blue stickers wrapped around it so it resembled Thomas the train (what spectacular marketing) and he begged me to take him to the Thomas show.

Well, why not?

I just brought him and Dee to the Singapore Expo for the show, while KK stayed home with Lu. The two monkeys:



What I liked most: The funky red sturdy and super-light-as-styrofoam blocks given out to all the kids to place on their chairs and sit on, so they are not blocked by all the adults.

What the kids liked most: What else?



They sang along, screamed in response to the actors, did the actions.

Dee asked me ad nauseum: “Where is James? Is James coming out later?”

Ninety minutes was just about right before Day got ants in his pants. I think Dee would have sat for a lot longer, she likes watching shows. (could be a girl thing, I don’t know)