ours

Today, we officially get the keys.

The five and six-figure cheques have been duly delivered, KK is mired in debt for the next 32 years, and we’re proud owners of our First Family Home.

The enormity of it!

When do we move in?
When the renovations are done. And there is a lot of basic work to do.



Have we started renovating?
No. We’re still figuring things out.

Will renovation take a long time?
Based on our piddling budget, no. We probably get the basics sorted out and that’s about it.

What’s the theme?
Low-maintenance. No matter what the result, it’s got to be easy to clean.

Interesting fact!
We bought it for less than what the sellers paid for it in 1996.

okto

I admit: Sometimes (not always just sometimes) the measure of a “successful” day for me is if the kids don’t watch TV. Not one minute.

I am being silly and stubborn and ridiculous, I know, but the moment they turn to the TV and are captivated by it, I feel like I have failed in some sense.

Like I have not worked hard enough to come up with interesting programmes for them, like I am redundant, like I have failed to engage them.

Like I said, ridiculous! Particularly since growing up I was a real TV junkie who pored over the TV listings and watched hours of TV a day, taping those I had to miss. TV made much of me.

I don’t quite know why I think the way I do now. Media reports perhaps, of mind-numbing TV. Or seeing how their eyes glaze over when they’re hooked.

Anyway Day has suddenly fallen in love with TV. I don't know why now.

He’s always watched the odd TV show here and there, along with his usual diet of the occasional VCD and DVD.

But in the last few weeks, when he sees any flickering screen from the corner of his eye, his head snaps back and he duly positions himself in front of the TV for a long long time.

It’ll be between 30 minutes to an hour most days, going up to two or three hours on weekends. (it’s long because it used to be zilch)

His fav: Okto.

He giggles at Hannah Montana, learns the Transformers theme song, memorizes all the TV and advertisement jingles, is a sucker for Avatar and he memorizes the lyrics for songs on “Don’t Forget the Lyrics”.

He watches intensely, learning everything, repeating the lines. He is not a peripheral TV watcher.

Suddenly his world has expanded.

And I do notice a change post-TV: He is very easily bored.

The usual activities I do with them, he says: “Haiya so boring” before waltzing off in search of something else to do. Needless to say, a screen is the best bet.

And while he used to play for a long time by himself, building his train tracks or some Lego, he would much rather roam around aimlessly, if not switching on the TV then looking for the neighbour’s boy to (yes) watch TV at his house.

He is also significantly ruder. (talks back, eye rolling, sighing)

On the plus side, of course his world is way bigger.

And it’s quite amazing what he retains. He sings Shakira and Ricky Martin (particularly the “bullet to your brain” line from Livin La Vida Loca) after watching one episode.

Apart from setting some limits – “Switch off after this programme!” - I’m not going to stop him watching TV. It’s never been my policy to stop them doing anything they want to unless it’s dead wrong.

If anything I should watch too.

Avatar’s pretty good, no?

victorious vera

]
* Vera at nine months

Because it is a victory in every way, that little Vera (whom Dee is very fond of) has just turned one.

Because the chubby cherub is (very happily) giving her parents grief in all the usual ways: Don’t want to sleep, must carry and rock, wants to stand.

Because she beats all the arrogant uncaring doctors who said she would not live past the age of one.

Because – if I’m not wrong - she remains the only living Trisomy 18 baby in Singapore (most, if they are born alive, don’t make it past the first few months) and is a true fighter in every sense of the word!

Before Dee started school, on the occasional morning, we would visit Vera. Her folks were my uni hostel friends and I thought Vera’s daddy - a Super Dad who has taken no-pay-leave for close to a year now, to give her round-the-clock care (and who seems to have lost some weight in the process) – might be in dire need of some adult company.

Dee was fond of Vera (I suppose any other baby apart from her own sister would do!) and liked hugging and playing with Vera, poking the little skin tag on Vera’s cheek – “Is that a mole, Mummy?” - grabbing her chubby paws and clapping them in time to the music from the toys.



At one point, she liked Vera to sit in her lap so she could hug her.

Now that Dee is in school, on the occasions I go, I bring Lu. Lu, a month younger, completely does not care for Vera.



Maybe when they’re older!

fatterina

"Hello everybody this is my new outfit and I so love it I want to wear it to dance I want to wear it out I want to wear it to sleep! I want I want I want!"

The pink leotard and pull-up tutu is a hand-me-down from the neighbour's niece.

Buried in a huge bag of girly clothes, Dee zoomed in on the ballet outfit and insisted we put in on there and then. Thereafter she was lost in her own world, raising her arms and twirling around.

KK couldn't resist. He just had to squeeze her. He chased her round and round the house, yelling "Ballerina, Fatterina!" as she ran squealing, arms flailing, tutu bouncing.

I want to tell KK to be Politically Correct and quit calling her fat only she, he and I are laughing too hard.



She would have gone to sleep in it only there were sweaty patches all over from her running.

Since then she's gone out a few times in that ballet outfit.

11 months of lu

Eleven months old now!

Boy-boy Lu has now gotten into the habit of picking up things with holes in it, peering through and chortling at whoever she sees on the other side.

That's her now: A little sam-seng, very fun-loving and she likes people.

At this stage, she feels more like a naughty little girl than a baby. And KK now likes to say: "She's so human now", which doesn't make any sense but as long as I get it, who cares.

Off the top of my head:

* Her hair is long enough for me to flatten when wet! Pretty pretty! And it's always the case because she sweats even in air-con.

* She's a glutton. Not on Dee's scale but she's developed a healthy appetite and finishes adult-sized bowls of rice and porridge and pretty much eats anything.

* Yes she fakes her crying. Opens her mouth wide, screws up her face and yells while keeping an eye on my face. Whenever she does I laugh off the top of my head because it really is such bad acting, then she stops and looks thoroughly pissed.

* She is completely un-interested in walking and scoots around on her palms and knees, preferably in the dirtiest places like the car porch.

* She is completely un-interested in talking but prefers to communicate by going "Eh! Eh! Eh!" in the rudest of tones and imperiously pointing her finger at whatever she wants or wherever she wants to go.

* She has perfected the "backside-first" principle and is good to get off beds, chairs, sofas, steps and stairs on her own.

* She love-love-love-love-loves me to bits, even though I have a tendency to very willingly let whoever is around to carry her off. I have to admit: With Day, I was consumed and even if there was help, I'd only want him to want me and I would take him over after a few minutes. With Dee, there was no choice. With Lu, I am more than willing to accept help when it's available. The irony is that with Lu I have less help than I did before. (My dad's 70-ish now and his helper is not too keen on kids)

But when I do take her and when she quickly wraps her (slightly chubbier) arms around my neck and shoots me that goofy seven-toothed grin, I happily ignore the urgent e-mails and overdue articles and get down to buzzing her neck. (going BZZZZZ in her neck tickles her no end)

It still is such a luxury to be able to do that (baby over work) and I am thankful I can, from first kid through to the third.

bye, mer-mer

Mer-mer is a gifting mermaid whom they’ve been visiting every night for the last few months.

I think she’s officially been banished with a shocking lack of sentimentality. Kids!

I, however, the older adult who concocted the black-haired green-eyed mermaid, will miss her.

And just for that reason, I am going to write down the quickie bed-time tale I spun once and which I was made to repeat in excess of 100 times with minor variations because the kids so loved it and which I loved too because it made them want to switch off the lights as I only tell it in the dark.

Even though it’s frankly so stupid and un-imaginative!

It was a hot/sunny/rainy/gray day.

Dayday, Jojo and Lulu were at home and they were bored with nothing to do.

Dayday said: Why don’t we visit our friend Mer-Mer?

And Jojo said OK let’s go.

So they pushed Lulu in her pram, opened the door, went down the path, through the forest and they came out at the river.

And there, their friend Mer-mer was perched on a rock sunning herself.

She said: Hello, my friends!

Dayday and Jojo said Hello and Lulu said Eh! Eh!

Mer-mer asked: Are you all here for some quiz questions today?

(Day and Dee pipe up: “Me!” They usually fight to go first)

Mer-mer turns to Jojo and she asks: Are you ready for your question?

(Dee answers: “Yes, mee-tai-tok and mee-tai-poot”, whatever that means, before they both crack up)

Mer-mer says, alright Jojo, here is your question. Can you tell me what is the shape of the Singapore Flyer?

(Dee insists on the same two Singapore Flyer-related questions every night: What is its colour and what is its shape. Any other question and she screams. She answers: Er, circle!)

Mer-mer says, Jojo, you are…. ab-so-lute-ly…. RIGHT! Brilliant!

And so Mer-mer dives into the water and she comes up with a box. She gives the box to Jojo and Jojo opens the box and inside, she finds a huge pack of potato chips.

(Dee is dead serious about what she gets and if she doesn’t like it she insists on a gift exchange and I have to waste a minute making my fictional mermaid dive back down. Usually junk food does the trick, though for several weeks she was obsessed about getting a red and yellow ball)

Jojo says oh thank you Mer-mer, I love potato chips! And Mer-mer said, you’re welcome.

Then Mer-mer turns to Dayday and asks: Dayday, are you ready for your question?

(Day answers: “Yes, mee-tai-tok” and they both crack up again)

Mer-mer says, OK Dayday, here is your question: Which floor do your grandparents live on?

(With Day, the questions are serious quiz questions which he answers seriously. He says: Fifth floor)

Mer-mer says, you are absolutely right!

She dives into the water and she comes up with a box. She gives the box to Dayday and…

(Day usually cuts in: “Give me anything. Er I don’t want junk food because it’s bad for me)

… when Dayday opens the box, he finds a big box of raisins!

(At this point if Dee decides she wants what Day gets – like raisins – she starts screaming. “I want raisins! I want raisins! I want to hold the whole packet!” And I am left trying to resolve a fight in the virtual world, which really isn’t that easy because I can’t make Day virtually give her his raisins and she refuses to virtually share and I can’t just magic another packet of raisins out of thin air because the kids would know I’m not taking them seriously. Honestly.)

Dayday tells Mer-mer, oh thank you! And she says you’re welcome and they go back home with their chips and their raisins and they show it to their mummy and papa and everybody is happy. The end.

(Then I make my exit.)

Why Mer-mer’s been banished is because I started a hypnotherapy tale for their afternoon nap in a renewed bid to lull them into slumber, and they have decided they like it so much they want to do away with Mer-mer.

To quote Day tonight, when they were whining for their Imagination Story as I tried to tell them that Mer-mer would miss them: “But we’ve been visting Mer-mer for AGES!”

Dee cuts in: “Ya I am going to say bye to Mer-mer, bye to Tinkerbell, bye to Boo-boo!” (all subsidiary gifting characters who didn’t quite work so well)

I was a little pissed because the Imagination Story requires more mental work. OK that’s the real reason why I don’t want to give up Mer-mer.

dour faces

What do you know, Dee puts pen to paper today and next to her usual odd squiggles, she suddenly draws what looks to be the beginnings of a face.

And it IS a face.



My face. And then papa's face. And then she cheerfully puts in the eyes and the nose and the mouth and the cheeks (those long lines at the side), dashes off thatches of hair, arms (where the ears should be), carefully outlines a stripey lower body and dots in private parts. Yes, private parts. (the tiny dots where the belly buttons should be)

Her avant-garde scribble is right in-between.

I am so happy shrieky - Wow! It's Us! - she is super-enthused and begins to work on another piece. This time a family portrait. She merrily switches pencils from left to right. She has been doing that nowadays. She draws papa with her left hand then draws me with her right.



From left to right, it's papa, mummy, gor-gor ("He's a BIG BIG boy" she says), herself and Lulu.

I don't say a thing. But I do notice how she draws herself sideways - contrary to how everyone is oriented, sort of like she is stepping on Lu - and colours herself in an oustanding colour.

And my, my, everyone has such DOUR expressions. Our mouths are all in grim, straight lines except for hers which sort of twitches up on the left like she is trying to suppress a smirk. Dear me.

It's a world away from the happy faces Day used to draw when he was about the same age, but then we all know the two are different as night and day. Lovely.

admin

The thought strikes today: I'm actually an administrator.

If I may explain: Nearly five years ago when I quit my job I did so to enjoy my child, Day. I did.

Every day was a discovery, a spontaneous adventure.

Every new thing he did was a revelation, an incredible reminder of how fast he was growing.

Every thing I tried to do with him, I succeeded and I did it with patience and unflappable calm, never raising my voice.

I was exactly the kind of mum I wanted to be. I was an adventurer on a joyride.

Today, I am a completely different kind of mum.

My enjoyment of them is passive rather than active. (Meaning I sit back and watch them do their thing rather than try to engage them, because it's hard to find things which can engage the trio simultaneously)

It is fairly impossible for me not to raise my voice, be sarcastic or turn ugly (I'm on frown-line alert) at least once every few days.

And mostly all day, I am really doing administration: Wake the kids, feed the kids, get them to school, fetch them from school, put them to bed, get Day to practise some piano, get them to finish their dinner, bath them, put them to bed. Going through the paces, so to speak.

In-between, most of my energy is spent catering to requests and demands which come fast and furious even as I am carrying Lu. Day wants egg, Dee wants egg too, Day wants to shit, while he is shitting I get out the paints for Dee, I wipe Day's backside, oh no Dee has spilled the water, now Day wants to do origami.

Today I try to give Day some piano practice and what might have been pleasant if it were just him turns into fish market as Dee and Lu both scream to plonk on the keys / tear the piano book respectively.

This is reality. The halcyon days, when it was just one and when I was a bright-eyed bushy-tailed new mum, are long gone. I can't quite "do fun things" with my kids.

But it is a reality I am still at peace with, because I'd still rather be with them than anywhere else.

And on the upside, these are the days when I can (if I am lucky) just leave them alone for long stretches to play and make their own adventures, sans mummy.

her first trike

Cycling a tricycle does not come automatically. I mistakenly thought it did.

Dee had been paddling along with feet on the ground. The moment she put her feet on the pedals, she came to a stop.

She didn't seem to know how to push down to make the trike move. After a day, she figured.

Then the trike started veering left and right with her pedal movements, as she had to learn how to control the steering. After a day, she figured.

But she doesn't go more than 5 minutes. She doesn't like getting sweaty.

* I picked up the three-wheeler from the Salvation Army for $10.

dee snippets

Things she does which make me go Grrrr or Hahaha, depending.

ONE
She obediently finishes up her healthy brown rice dinner, slips down her high chair and is perfectly quiet, out-of-sight, as we finish our dinner in blissful peace.

Suddenly I realize I am actually enjoying my dinner, which has been an anomaly for the past few years. My Dee radar shoots up: What is she doing?

I spot her in the living room and as I approach, she speedily stuffs her face with something, with renewed vigour. I discover that nearly all the pineapple tarts laid out for the guests are gone. That’s over 10 tarts, maybe 20. God knows.

TWO
She hangs onto a pack of purple grape Yakult which por-por buys her from NTUC.

As the rest of us tuck into durian – which she is steadily developing an aversion to – she quietly sits in a corner.

Cleaning up, I search for the Yakult pack to store in the fridge. I find fragments of plastic, empty bottles, broken foil and discarded straws where she was. No drink.

I investigate, I interview. I find out that KK and Day each drank a bottle. When I find her, she eyeballs me while sucking madly the dregs of what I now know for fact to be her third bottle. In less than 10 minutes.

* Lest anyone thinks she is a glutton, she is no longer. She has just developed very marked, unhealthy food preferences for everything I disapprove of.

lu's balls

There is something I find absolutely hilarious in Lu methodically plucking golf balls (she has about 20) from a dolly pram and carefully letting them roll off her palm, earnestly watching them bounce to a stop before proceeding to the next ball.

Even the sound of the balls going "tok tok tok tok" if I am in the next room cracks me up.

This, KK's junk golf balls, is her favourite toy. Nothing even comes close.

uncle chef

If there is one person I can pinpoint as having unlocked the world of culinary marvels to the kids, it’d be Choon.

It’s one thing being served food day in, day out; it’s quite another getting involved in the cooking process so it becomes fun.

And I can say quite certainly that if only adults could be bothered with the logistics and mess and the possible danger of watching where little fingers go, ALL kids love mucking around the kitchen.

Everytime Choon comes back, he cooks something with the kids.

The last time he came back in March last year (08), he got them to roll meatballs for tomato meatball spaghetti. From assembling the ingredients together…



… to getting hands dirty. Dee didn’t want to touch the meat.



The spaghetti meal and the process of helping to produce it, must have made quite an impression on them; well on Day at least.



Because a year later (as in, just this week), when Choon mentioned cooking something, Day piped up: Meatballs?

Only this time, Choon made French Fries.

And the biggie project was chocolate and walnut cookies, from a recipe which he pulled off the Internet. He literally chucked the laptop on the gas hob and read the ingredients off the screen.



Dee – in a repeat of last year – did not quite want to get her hands dirty, though she liberally swabbed globs of the uncooked mixture for consumption.



Day rolled the dough into cookie shapes, kneading it for so long his chocolate chips melted. Here’s one of his messy creations.

an angry phase

* Picture by Jody

Such happy faces are increasingly rare.

At least, those he turns my way.

Angry is the expression I mostly see nowadays.

Why? A phase?

He is now mostly rude, mostly angry and while not exactly defiant, very self-righteous to the point of treating us like idiots.

Phrases he throws my way every day: Haiya. Silly buttocks. Silly mummy. Tsk. Stupid.

I suddenly realize he hasn't woken up smiling, coming over to me and crawling into my bed for a cuddle, for months now. Maybe even a year.

Most times when he wakes up and if he spots me, he starts back and runs away. He'd rather avoid me if he can. Because I make him do things he doesn't want to do (it used to be he loved doing those things to make me happy).

Gentle reminders (and I am gentle, I'm not even curt) to say please and thank you are met with exaggerated sighs.

And he's taken to the very unpleasant habit of ranting. If I said he can't have the cookies, he'd say: "Then what am I going to eat? Do you want me to starve? Then I'll die then how?

Or if I said I had no car and couldn't drive him back from school, for instance, he'd yell: "Huh? Then I have to walk and sweat and sweat then I'll get all dirty and sweaty and so tired! Tsk. Silly mummy."

Or: "OK lah! Then we have to walk back along the road and if a car comes along and hits me then I die lah!"

What I have to do, is NOT get angry, stay calm and ideally deflect his angst with humour.

Unfortunately, what I do end up doing sometimes, is get angry and use the wrong words. If he went on about the walking back home, I am apt to respond in automatic indignant moralistic self-righteousness: "Hey I had to walk all the way here in the hot sun with the pram to bring you home. I don't have to you know. I could well leave you in school to rot instead of having to suffer."

Ooops. I need anger management classes too.

on day's learning

ORIGAMI

Day sits in a corner with his face buried in a book with yellowed pages and where silverfish potentially lurk, a small piece of square paper in his hands. He squints, he frowns, he folds the paper this way and that. Then he looks at me and sighs: "Mummy help."



Origami is his latest thing, the result of the recent unearthing of origami books nearly two decades old belonging to us.

I fold a snowflake - the second I make in my life (first being 20 years ago) - and he's hooked on Paper Engineering.

He learns to slowly and patiently ensure all the ends and the edges meet or the result will be a mess, he learns to read the arrows, he learns to call on mum for major transformations. He makes cups, houses, santas, birds, dogs, rabbits.

CHINESE



Day brings back a stack of Chinese books from school. I open them and my jaw drops. I can't read half the words and I studied Chinese for 12 years. He inserts a CD into the player, opens the book and waits. We hear an Oriental melody set to a thumping bass. A woman's voice comes on reading the words and my son chants along with her. Head bopping to the music, he never stops and he never looks up.

I wonder when he will stop but he doesn't seem to want to.

From page 1 through to page 15, for 15 minutes, he reads. Until Dee emerges from the kitchen with some gastronomic distraction.

This year, it seems, is Chinese year in Day's school. Suddenly, he is inundated with all things Chinese.

One day a week, he's got Chinese theatre and drama.

Then there is this odd chanting methodology which I reckon is based on the flashcard rationale: If they see it often enough and repeat it often enough, they remember. They do it every morning in school, it seems.

KK is wholeheartedly against it: That's not how to learn Chinese, he puffs.

How then, I ask. He has no answer.