when mum is in school...

... they all go haywire.



Dee struggling to escape from the clutches of Teacher Namrata, whom she is inordinately fond of when I'm not around. Teachers Carol, Nat and Yunyun try to keep smiling.



Day, in teary hiccups, refuses to sing the "Gong Xi Fa Cai" song which he and the rest of the school kids had been practising for the last few weeks because I'm there: Exactly two metres away from him sitting on the ground. He only wants to be in my lap clinging on for dear life.

WHY? It's a repeat of the Family Day fiasco.

Dee I can understand because she's young. All the rest of her classmates were sobbing on their parent's shoulders, like her. But the rest of Day's classmates were perfectly poised to perform with their parents around.

He didn't even want to get near the lion which the rest of his classmates were merrily molesting.



As the lion prowled through the school and the children followed, batting its fluttering eyes, patting its posterior and trying to lift up the "hide" to see the tattooed panting irritated men beneath, my children went where the lion did not go.

I should have just sent the kids solo for their Chinese New Year school party. My presence - as always at any school event - spoilt it completely for them.

The only good thing was I got to see Day's painting, which he produced after staring very hard at a real pussy-willow.

free fashion

Funny. I seem to have forgotten how to write hence the hiatus. (started the post Tuesday, actually wrote it today, Saturday)

It could be the dodgy pasty stewed-in-milky-juice two-day-old prawns I ate which gave me a bad stomach and which has rendered me horizontal for most of two days. (Why did I eat it? I have an aversion to waste nowadays and the prawns tasted sort of fine)

But Chinese New Year being Chinese New Year, straight after my stomach laboriously expels the toxins and I stop feeling nauseous, it’s time for another big buffet meal.

Anyway what I wanted to document, was our Family Female Free Fashion Adventures this CNY. Very economical.

THE GIRLS

See, the girls had their tops made by their Gu-gu, KK’s sister.

To me, the ability to stitch an item of clothing is God-like. (along with cooking, I think these are the epitomes of domesticity and which I both fail at)

The kid’s gu-gu has a fashion dummy at home on which she sometimes tailors her own clothes and bags.

This time, she patched together some fabric she used for cushions into long-sleeved blouses for the girls.



I have no doubt that these will probably remain the only two pieces of lovingly hand-made clothing my children will ever possess and which I intend to hang on to and hopefully pass on as some sort of heirloom.





THE MOTHER

Me, I decide to recycle my mum’s old clothes.



Lovely sleeveless above-the-knee concoctions of French lace and whatnot, she has clearly grown out of them while I have grown IN to them. (meaning she got fatter and I got thinner. They used to be tight for me.)


* The blue French lace cheongsam

As we went round, she thoroughly enjoyed telling the relatives: Oh this was my dress. And the standard snap reaction to her was: You were so THIN?


* Her yellow I-don’t-know-what-material dress. Lu looking feminine!

The first wearer of the dresses, my mum.



And one for the album, our family on the first day of Chinese New Year, with Lu in the picture. Last year she was still in me.

family

A joyful reunion: Day knocks the breath out of his beloved Kaofu Choon.



My brother Choon picks the perfect time for his homecoming from Darwin to Singapore – the night before Chinese New Year.

Day, who has been SMS-ing Choon for months, is itchy with anticipation.

Choon wins the day again when he unveils gummy sweets in the car. Dee gets all chummy with her uncle.

]

REUNION I

The reunion dinner Choon just missed (he later eats alone when he arrives back home) was steamboat with our folks: Simple and in-house with food all in ubiquitous takeaway plastic boxes.



Day does the dip.



Lu says AAAH for the first CNY reunion dinner in her life. She eats noodles and soup and a little beancurd.



REUNION II

The dinner we had with KK’s folks was not as simple and infinitely pricier, but just as yummy, at Plaza Singapura’s Lao Beijing restaurant.



Lu with her uncle, who I think she really resembles, right down to the hair.



Dee with her gu-gu.

cny chinatown with kids... tips

In case we want to go again next year – though the prospect is dim.

ONE
Do not drive. Park elsewhere – Vivocity has loads of carparks – then take the train to Chinatown (two stops away).



TWO
Do not eat there. Too crowded. Eat at Vivocity.


* Day and one of his favourites, bak kut teh. He polishes off a full bowl.


* We toss Lu a bone.

THREE
It’s probably better to go on a weekday morning. Like Tuesday when there is no one around. It won’t be so pretty without the lights though.



FOUR
If one party is eager (me) and the other not (KK), it would suffice to pop out of the MRT and brave the crowds with baby and 2 kids (Don’t Lose Them!) for all of 15 minutes to “soak in the atmosphere” before scurrying back in. Eager party should not show a black face when the Unwilling one intones: Whatever. Hurry Up. I don’t have a good feeling about this.


* KK’s grim mien.

work

The word WORK: The kids have grown to hate it.

WORK is something which takes people they love away from them.

And I suspect they think Mummy works a lot more than Papa.

See, because KK has – since the days they were born – been working entire days, it’s an unquestionable routine set in stone. Papa is gone from the time they wake up, till dinner-time. When he’s on leave, it’s a wonderful surprise and that is what they remember.

Me, because my working hours and times are consistently unpredictable and because I am mostly THERE, they remember when I have to GO.

When I have to leave them at night for gigs.

Day and Dee note my all-black widow’s ensemble and they chirp in joint terror: “Mummy where are you going?”

When I have to leave them (actually every night) after tucking them into bed to sit in front of the laptop for several precious hours.

Dee never fails to ask, every night and sometimes as early as after dinner because, you know, the girl has got to psychologically prepare herself: “Mummy you have to work? Don't work, mummy, don’t work!”

Sometimes she elaborates: “Mummy don’t go downstairs and go outside the house.” But she’s fine if I am IN-house, working in the study room.

Day is actually alright. He accepts it because KK has (rightly or otherwise) told him: “Mummy must work because she needs to earn money. If we don’t have money, you won’t have money to buy anything.” All he occasionally asks me is: “Mummy you have a gig? You have to write a story?”

Dee is still wrestling with it. She does not like WORK.

But I do! Sometimes (only sometimes) it’s great fun.


* The band and wedding singers at a St Regis wedding

a new slide

It works great. Very slippery and there's a long way to go.



Probably not very clean, though.

10 months of lu

Ten months old today.

As her por-por aptly puts it: She was good. Then she was not so good. Now she’s bad.

Quite normal, really. Three exactly-the-same kids.

I pick her up, throw her up, swing her around (KK warns: G force! G force!) and still carrying her by the armpits I look her in the eye and say: “Oooh you’re sooo Nooty! Little Miss Nooty!”

Pardon the silliness but she’s really rather cute in her skinny sam-seng way, so completely different from her overly fat tubby-legged sister.

She’s basically decided this month that it’s in her Power to not want to do things.

* Not sleep. (Resist! Resist! Try to hit the ground when carried! Arch the back when forcibly pressed into the pram! Refuse to let go of the breast even when 90% asleep!)
* Not bath. (Rebel! Rebel! Scream when stripped! Arch back when bathing! Wriggle out of mummy’s grasp!)
* Not eat. (Reject! Reject! No porridge, no water, nothing healthy! Spit spit spit! Only whatever the adults are having! Salt! Sugar! Oil!)


* One Kenny Roger’s corn muffin which she delicately deconstructs and digests

That's about it, I think.

Oh she’s got 6 teeth, 2 below and 4 on top. Her dental development is superb.

Sips from straws. Small straws, big bubble tea-type straws (Yes yes I let her sip my bubble tea – just once - to keep her quiet).

Verbally makes some noises which crack up her siblings. Babas and mamas.

Hair isn’t growing so fast. I am tempted to shave her again, just so her agonizing bathtime can be shortened.

Oh and she’s reached the Velcro Mummy stage. She wants to be stuck to me forever.

water bottles

We’d die without water, right.

So it’s funny how difficult it is to get kids to drink the stuff.

My neighbour used to get her maids to force-feed her boys water, through a medicine syringe, through what I call opportunistic feeding. Anytime there is an opportunity – mouth open, watching TV, taking a break from running around – quickly shoot into the mouth.

Which means the maids have to be pretty much shadowing the kids but as she had one maid per kid, that’s alright.

But that’s not the point.

My kids do not like water.

Like most other kids, what they would much rather have, is Ribena, Milo, juices, packet drinks, anything sweetened. Which is still water, yes, only it wrecks the teeth and oooh, all that sugar in the body can't be good!

(On a side-note, KK hardly drinks water himself. He’s a coffee, isotonic drinks and juice man.)

I don’t usually care very much but I occasionally throw a “WHY CAN’T YOU ALL DRINK WATER?” tantrum as I glug down my fifth cup of the day.

Day, Mr Sensible, probably drinks the most water (a cup or two a day?) because he says “It’s good for me”. But it’s out of duty more than anything else.

Dee, the Constipated Missy, has had it drummed into her head that “water makes my ung-ung soft” and so, she occasionally asks for it. But it’s more out of fear (of rocky bowels) than anything else.

The other day, I bought them water bottles. The first I’ve ever bought for them. (They have been using plastic bottles).

Day had asked me to buy him a water bottle because his friends have nice bottles with straps.

I said, “OK mummy will bring you to choose a water bottle”. I brought him to Isetan (stupid) and told him: “Pick one you like”.

Now I hardly ever give Day carte blanche to pick whatever he wants. I can’t even remember the last time I did that. I did it this time because, well, it’s a bloody water bottle and how expensive can it get?

He zoomed straight for Thomas and Friends. In fact, every bottle on the shelf had some cartoon character on it which jacked up the price by 200%.

I saw the price tag, went “Uh….”, Day heard, he went “Tsk. Haiya!”, picked another plain bottle which was half the price. I looked at him. He didn't look me in the eye. I decided: What the heck. I did say, Pick One You Like.

So I bought it. And because I promised Dee that I’d get her a bottle too, and because she has to have whatever her brother has (or she'd go for his), I picked up another similar bottle (Princessy pink because there really isn't much choice and I was in a rush). Damage: $25 for two.



I really should have gone to Watsons.

I hope the bottles last through primary school.

In the meantime, however, it has worked wonders with the water-drinking.

They love toting their bottles everywhere they go – including their beds - hanging it around their necks, and occasionally taking a sip from it. They just pop the top off and a straw pops out.

Which is good because there's no screwing and no spillage. OK that didn't sound quite right..

There’s Madam with a big glass of water right in front of her (and her current all-time favourite doo-nut), but she prefers to blissfully sip from her bottle.



I wonder how long the novelty will last.

Oh and Lu HATES water with a passion. HATES. Without any sense of duty or fear of anything, she spits out every drop of water she is given. Effectively, she doesn't drink any water the entire day. All liquids come via breast milk, her nightly Similac and the little bit of porridge she allows past her lips.

barrage fountain

I promised I'd bring them back to the Barrage to try out the fountains.

So I did.



Day frolicked for all of 10 minutes before declaring, teeth chattering, that it's "so cold".

Dee didn't even touch the water. She just... tagged along, mostly.

home

Sorry. To all the people who told us otherwise. But we got it.

Home.



They see it as a ridiculously old (1950s) apartment which is bound to give us hell with electricity and water piping, an apartment which is ridiculously impractical for a family with three young kids since it’s a walk-up on the third storey, an apartment which is not the best environment for the kids as foreign workers (squeezed in a unit) live in the same area, an apartment which would be very hard to sell off, an apartment which we got at the wrong time since property prices are bound to nosedive even more.

We listened. They – property agents, insurance agent, parents – were probably right. And we held out. For nearly a month.

We caved in 20 December. When we wrote off a cheque to stake our claim on it.

So unlike our almost-Marine Parade purchase last year, I felt at peace once I signed off. It’s the same kind of rightness I felt when I made the decision to quit the job for Day, when we felt we had to go to Sydney.

How can I, how can we explain? The appeal of the crumbly old lady with the flower vents and the worn red stairs leading up to it?



Pragmatically speaking, it’s in the right place. Near my folks, right smack in the middle of places where we already hang out all the time, near the beach, near some great schools, only thing missing is the MRT.

It’s also the right price, just about what we can afford without having to starve. Yes, it’d be cutting it fine, but hey, it costs less than the Marine Parade HDB and it’s freehold.

The timing – for us – is also right. KK has just about had it, living in the balcony for the past year. Theoretically speaking, he could, of course, migrate to nicer areas of the house but he is living in my parent’s house. He would never be 100% comfortable.

But at the heart of it all, is the heart. It just feels right, for us. Others will honestly find it old and rusty and totally decrepit, but to us it’s old, it’s charming, it’s got soul.

To be honest, if we like something, we'd turn every minus into a plus!
Old? Oh, got soul! Can enbloc!
Must walk? Oh, good exercise!
Foreign workers? Oh come on, let's be inclusive!

Kids? We’ve brought them twice.

They take off their shoes, run all over the dusty cracked parquet floors, play hide and seek. We do believe that the kids can pick up certain vibes and they looked happy.

Just for ourselves, this is how we found her.

“One morning in November, while KK was sitting in my mum’s car (on her way to work she drops him at a MRT), he spotted the walk-ups, which are tucked behind some big trees and are fairly invisible unless you are looking for it, and the “Sale” sign.

He thought: “Wow nice location, these are not bad.” And thought nothing of it, for we were not planning on finding a home yet. Neither did we think we could afford a freehold property.

But he continued passing by and the sign continued being there and he continued thinking about it.

One Saturday morning, when we were driving past in our car, he ordered me to look. In a flash, I got the number down and gave the agent a call.

That afternoon, I had a look. I loved it.

I loved the oldness of it, it’s the same kind of old vibe which The Old School has in abundance and which cheerless new condos have none of.

Despite the crumbliness of it all, I loved the airy bright kitchen which overlooks a field of red roofs, the old-style ventilation holes in the walls, the two balconies, the two toilets, the square rooms and the three bedrooms. All 106 square metres of it. Tiny but sufficient.

We still thought nothing of it. We didn’t think we could afford it.

But I did see several other properties. I hated all of them, particularly the monotonous new condos.

I called the agent up again. And we did a bank valuation (which is free). The valuation was significantly lower than what the seller was asking for it.

We talked, she acceded. We signed.

We get the keys early March. We renovate, we move in. Hurray!"

understanding death

* Yes it’s a smiling photo but I don’t have a sad one

The other day, Day cried.

He had asked what would happen if mummy and papa died. I cannot recall what brought it on.

Nor can I recall what I said.

We were walking along in a rush and while hindsight makes me wish I had sat him down and looked him in the eye to explain something terrifically important, at that moment I really was not paying too much attention.

Something very factual to the effect that we would no longer be around.

Talk turned to the grandparents, I think I said something to the effect that they would no longer be around either, that they would probably go first in the right order of things.

He sniffed a little, the face crumpled and he wailed: “Then who’s going to look after me? I don’t want papa and mummy to die!”

He also talked about it with KK. I don’t know what transpired. But KK says: “I remember when I knew that my parents would be gone someday and I was much older than Day is now.”

I remember too. And I was much older than Day, who is four months away from his fifth birthday.

Seven years old exactly, I suddenly dwelt at length on a vision of staring at my mother’s black-and-white photo atop her coffin and I burst into loud tears. In class. The teacher asked me very worriedly what’s wrong but I couldn't say.

I’m not sure if Day understands death still. But I’m sure he doesn’t like it.

angel turns 1

Family happening!



Angelika, my air stewardess cousin's pretty little angel, turns 1.

Just searching through the blog, it's such a long way off from the time Weiyi visited me in Sydney (no children then) to the time Angel just turned a month old.

It's when I look at the blog entries and can distinctly remember editing the photos and writing the entries, that I feel time flies. And it's when I most appreciate the blog. Now the big-eyed mite is an almost-running one-year-old (the girl is fast!) with lots to say.

The family, with Janine on Uncle Ling's lap and Aunt Margaret carrying the latest addition, Danielle, another beauty!



But what my kids will remember most, is probably the cake.



Magnificent. And it actually tastes as good as it looks. I had a little bit of the leg, as Teddy was methodically amputated.

pa feeds lu

Finally, with his third kid, KK knows what it’s like to feed a baby.

And how he loves it!



Lu happens to be the only one of the three who is partial to the bottle and Similac. As I had a boatload of gigs in December, KK ended up having to feed her quite a few nights with a bottle or two, of formula milk.

As my gigs have dried up, he really doesn’t have to feed her anymore.

But he gets so much pleasure from it, he’s bought another tin just so he can give her a night pre-sleep bottle.

I want to laugh. When I amble over and I see KK, eyes open wide, ordering me to see how limp and happy she is in his arms, with only her mouth chomping away energetically.

He’s taken to flashing her wide grins, yelling: “Similac?” and laughing very loudly when she chuckles in return.

Me, I feel incredibly sorry for having deprived him of the pleasure for nearly five years. Then again, it isn’t quite my fault since both Day and Dee hated the bottle straight off.

I can't quite get a picture of her blissfully feeding from a bottle though; when she sees me she frowns and spits out the bottle.

back to school

My beautiful little fat fairy goes to school. Again.

I put on the first school uniform she has ever worn in her life - an incredibly chic concoction of purple pleats - and I stifle a tear.

I imagine sighing even more if I were to put her in a pair of socks and Mary Janes, but I bump down to earth when she heads straight for her ratty old blue slippers.

Still, she’s a right picture knees up.



Day has also got a smart new purple uniform, though I have to be very frank when I say I am hardly excited when he wears it. Unlike Dee. I think it's a Girl Thing.



It’s part of a school-wide sartorial revamp which I would really frankly rather not have since it’s costing an arm and a leg ($30 per set), but there you have it.

Last year, I felt exactly the same when school started and, suddenly saddled with all sorts of bills to pay for all sorts of admittedly forward-thinking but expensive programmes, I wanted to pull the kids out straight away to humbler institutions.

But it’s become bothersome. Plus Day loves school.

Dee. She sincerely, genuinely, cried her heart out. Not screaming, but soft tragic crying.

I stayed with her. For all of 30 minutes, before I decided I was officially starving and had to go home for breakfast. Then the floodgates broke.

She apparently moped all over the school looking for Day. Refused to feed herself. Didn’t drink any liquid so she would not have to ask the teacher for help in peeing. Sat in one corner.

Exactly like when I brought her nine months ago but a bit worse.

Within my social sphere, I know of kids who head straight to school with happy goodbyes and nary a tear. Perhaps I may finally stand a chance with Lu? (Day, I think, cried every morning for near four months. And he was 3 1/2 years old at the time)

lu boy

Despite the pink, every stranger I’ve ever met thinks Lu is a little boy.

I believe it’s not just the lack of hair. She has a distinctive boy’s face, with none of the features which are commonly thought of as belonging to a pretty little girl.

I happen to think she looks exactly like KK’s brother, though he strongly disagrees.

Here she is with her prettier (haha) brother, whom she loves with a passion. Both girls love their brother. But I think he’s quite fed up with them. Girls can be a bit much.

sickest

This week, I record as the sickest in the history of the Loh kids.

Sickest meaning I have never seen them so sick for so long a period.

I was wrong before.

This one has ensnarled Day and Dee. I have never seen them like this.

The baby hardly suffered in comparison. What was two days of fever and another two days of rashes?

She was quickly up and about, despite being coughed and sneezed on day in day out by her sibs. She is clearly well and truly protected, I think by the breast milk (it’s certainly not the antibiotics because Dee is taking the same thing).

The older two have been sick for a week and in the last two days, have been completely horizontal. It worried me, I have never seen my children so lethargic, even when sick before they are sprightly.

Here’s Day in mid-cough and Dee prostrate.



They just… lie and flop around, with shuttered eyes that are closed most of the day. Day gives little high-pitched moans “hoo…hoo…hoo” (sort of like the Liang Po Po TV character) and is especially clingy.

Dee stoically lies on her pillow, like some opium-puffing matriarch, and orders everyone in her lower-than-usual husky sore-throaty voice to GO AWAY and DON’T TOUCH ME.

They are not feverish. But they hack away. One starts, sets the other one off, then they go off on a chorus together. They cough till they vomit.

The only thing they can do, is watch TV.



Actually I think it’s the cough medicine – which I only gave them two days ago after I caved in and brought them to the paediatrician.

They were coughing but they were their usual selves until they started on Sedilix two days ago. It looks and smells a bit like gluey brown Coke.

Is this the marvellous cough mixture which parents give kids before they fly on planes, then, to knock them out?

I don’t know.

It’s really easy to have them all limp and sleepy all day and I have no complaints. But it’s just WEIRD. And they are such ZOMBIES. It’s like the light’s all gone out of their eyes.

* If I'm not blogging about anything else, it's because this sickness has dominated our lives. Thank God this hardly ever happens.