medicine lovers

“A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down…”

So goes the lyrics.

I hate medicine. I had so much of it force-fed down my throat as a weak little girl, I HATE it.

Day and Jo, however, love medicine. (which I suppose makes life a little easier for me)

The slightest hint of sickness and they demand for medicine.

I suspect it’s because we withhold it.

By and large, we nurse them through sickness with nothing but water and rest.

KK and I have the (perhaps misguided!) notion that in most cases the body gets stronger when left to fend for itself, and that medicine possibly does greater harm to the body than a garden-variety virus.

Between hearing them sniff / cough and feeding them an antibiotic, its the latter which makes me feel far more guilty.

Day, who very seldom falls sick, has just came down with an awful cough.

He knows medicine will ease the pain.

And so he goes to the fridge, opens it and asks me very nicely to please give him the Rhinathiol because he is coughing so bad and the Sedilix to dry up the phlegm.

Why he knows is because when Jo fell sick a fortnight ago (unfortunately her constitution requires rather a lot of medical intervention accompanied by dire threats of her becoming an asthmatic, which of COURSE I do not want to happen) Day would assemble her medicines, draw out the right amount with the syringes and then feed her under my watchful eye.

Upon request, I do medicate Day.

KK blusters on the sideline.

The rest of the day, Day reminds me ever so delicately when it’s time for his next dose.

I just find the whole scenario of my children begging me for medicine - even for sickly sweet foul-smelling ones whose odour makes me want to retch - very odd.

lu sings

The singing - all of one line - only really takes place from the 8 to 12 second mark.

She has a tendency to clap for herself after every line.

She also gives Jo a little slap at the end. She's like that. Follows Jo in every respect but not in an "I idolise you" manner (the way Jo looked up to Day). Rather, in the "You do this to me, I'll do this to you" way.

day's concert

Performing while people pay attention.

I suppose it’s sort of like giving a speech in public: It can be terrifying.

Playing the violin or piano or acting or singing or whatever, I couldn’t calm my shaking hands, fluttering heart and sheer panic until I was well into my 20s.

I never enjoyed giving a performance and even now, I find it plumb impossible to SMILE when performing. (I don’t mean a group performance but a solo one) I’m just too miserable. If anything I look angsty.

Day shows all the signs of Mini Me.

Last night his music class held a little end-of-term concert in the classroom.

Super-informal, every kid just went up to do their thing while the usual assortment of mums plus a smattering of extras like fathers and grandmothers stood behind the practice keyboards.

Every kid did their thing. Waltzed up, played, went back to their seat.

Except Day!

He clung on to me koala-like. I walked to the front with him, stood next to him, and still his eyes pleaded: Get me out of here!



He played perfectly, albeit in utter misery.

Slid off the seat in a hurry even while the audience was still applauding, grabbed my arm and buried his face in my jeans.

Later he tells me he wants to play with the group. I ask how he felt during the show. “I was scared. I don’t want to make mistakes.”

I tell him it’s good he thinks that way. But that mistakes are good because then he can get better the next time.

I’m not sure it sinks in because I tell him that so many times. Every time he colours outside the line or mis-spells a word or messes up a drawing.

Anyhow, we’re tremendously proud of him because he actually bothered to practise for the concert plus he aced it!

* Lu in the audience

jo's dress

In her entire lifetime I think I have bought fewer than five dresses for Jo.

That’s because we get enough gorgeous hand-me-down dresses. And most times she only wants to wear “big big shirts” and “long pants”.

The other day she picks her first dress.

I push her in her pram, past a cart in Vivocity selling children’s clothes from Thailand, when she suddenly jumps out of the pram and exclaims: “Mummy that’s a nice dress!”

(Nowadays that’s how she says she wants something. She never says she wants it. But she’ll say it’s very nice and I’m expected to follow up with “Do you want it?”)

We amble over and I see that it’s $20 which is alright.

I know once I pop it over her head I’d have to buy it because she won’t take it off.

I look, I think, finally I ask “Do you want it, Jo?”

She nods and raises her arms for me to remove her clothes.

She doesn’t take off her off-the-rack dress for the duration of the afternoon.

Here she is! In the first dress she’s ever chosen for herself!

a trick

I ask the kids: Can you stick out your tongue and touch your nose?

Immediately, Day obligingly sticks out his tongue and wags it under his nose. "I can't, mummy, I can't."

At exactly the same moment, Jo sticks out her tongue and holds her nose with her fingers.

She improvises: “Mummy, stick out your tongue and touch your eye!”

She sticks out her tongue, pokes her left eye with a finger and giggles.

Me and KK laugh and laugh and laugh!

naughty imp

If my Jo was a Fat Fairy, Lu is a Naughty Imp.

How did time pass so fast? When did the baby become so tall? When did she get so impish? When did her limbs get so sturdy and tough?


* My favourite hot pants. It makes her look juicy.

For some reason Lu’s development speeds past.

I am slow to cotton on.

With Day and Jo I noted down every little detail every step of the way. It seemed to take Day a long time to grow up, Jo a little faster, Lu the fastest.





Dearest Lu, she has grown and become an equal member of the trio: Eats as much as them, plays catching games with them (they make her the monster and taunt her to chase them because well, she never will), communicates with them.



She is still so like Baby Day. Wholesome, good-natured, easy-going and tough.

So tough she surprises me. Falls, scrapes, head knocks, painful cheek pinches (from Jo), finger flicks (from Jo), bed falls. Unless it is a dramatic injury she stops, rubs the spot and thinks: Is this really painful? Most times she moves on.

So good-natured I can’t help but laugh when I encounter her on her endless rounds around the house, flashing her gloriously sunny smile (disappearing eyes and all, ala Jo and KK), yelling “Hi” and “Bye-bye”.

And so wonderfully interactive. It took a lot of effort to elicit anything from Jo. It takes very little effort to play with Lu. Anyone making monkey faces at her (Peekaboo!) probably won’t be left in the (embarrassed) lurch. She will respond.

Naughty? Yes. She holds out a banana for you and before you can take it she snaps it back, makes a strange high-pitched "hee-hee-hee" chortle and runs off.

She is becoming more than a match for Jo. Jo screams at her, she screams back. Jo screams “No!” she screams “NO!” Jo hits her, she hits back. Of course I stop it but she can hold her own.

Oh and the bub has started singing! No words but snatches of Twinkle Twinkle!

acclimatization

Thirty-six steps up the red stairs.

In the last six months the kids have done their training.

Day scampers up, Jo holds my left hand, I carry Lu in my right arm. Nobody complains anymore. I don’t know what I will do when I have groceries, but I’ll figure.

They have to get used to the smell, the feel, the mood of the place.

Today – an hour - is the longest we have ever stayed by virtue of the fact that the dust has finally settled, the drilling and hammering has stopped, the floor is clean and there is no life-threatening equipment around.

Do abodes give off good / bad vibes that children, with all their open-ness, pick up?

In all our house-hunting, there were times when we stepped in and the kids wailed to be carried, or for us to just go.

This one has always been a running place. Not a calming place, but a running place. They just keep running in circles from room to room (they cover the whole place in under 20 seconds) and playing catch.

Today they also helped to unwrap the cling wrap from the tables.

do not take me

I think the worst way to be photographed is next to a kid.

Never will your complexion appear so sallow and lifeless, never will your eyebags appear so prominent and pendulous, never will your teeth appear so stained and uneven.

I don’t really like taking photographs with kids.

I end up looking really, really, really terrible.

Because all children are honestly gorgeous creatures. They radiate, they glow, they are saturated with colour. And all the zooming in the world will not show up one pore on their impossibly perfectly infuriatingly dense complexions.

It is impossible to take a bad photo of a kid.

Of course, most times I take photos with my kids, my face is au naturale (pale and sallow), I am feeling drained and my hair is a shapeless self-cut bowl.

Then again, even if I were crazy enough to get a haircut and makeup just to take photos with my kids, youth is youth and I’d still look bad.

Most I can do is to try and smile as brilliantly as I possibly can. The “You’d better perk up and look wide-awake or you’ll look like shit” expression.

Anyway, some photos I took with Jo (and Lu who was in the vicinity). Jo likes hamming it up for the camera and I join in to patronize her.



I take one look at the results and I groan at the top halves of the photos.



I should take more photos with my folks.

camp david

Tonight for the first time in his life and our lives, Day will not be with us.

He’s attending his first overnight camp in school.



KK kisses him in the morning and tells him: Day I’ll miss you.

Me, I tell him: Go have fun!

First thing I said when the teachers said there was a camp for the 5 and 6-year-olds, I asked if it was going to be a full-blown overnight camp for 3 nights.

For some strange reason I am very eager for him to go camping and start growing up. It’s going to be loads of fun for all the kids to try to get to sleep next to each other!

The teachers say: Don’t be nuts! We’ll go crazy looking after them for just one night, how can we do more?

The teachers tell me there are quite a few kids whose parents do not want their kids to stay overnight in school. I suppose I can understand that too.

Anyhow Day had a fun time packing his little briefcase. A few changes of clothes, a Planets book for bedtime reading (though I doubt he will touch it at all), swimming trunks for Wild Wild Wet on Saturday morning, a towel, comb and toothbrush. Utilitarian but sufficient.



I drop in on him twice.

Once during his dinner BBQ. Feasting on prawns, corn cobs, squids (a really great spread), he hugs me and tells me he fell a lot during the water games. Then he waves me on "Bye, mummy" and turns back to his food and friends. I am proud and happy as can be. That he does not want to follow me.

Second time, at about 10pm. I peep in and he is lying on the floor with his friends covered with a blanket. He is tossing and turning and clearly trying to sleep but it's possibly a little bright for him because the back garden light is switched on. Jo (who is with me) pipes up: Why is gor-gor not wearing his school uniform? Day's eyelids flick open and he looks around. Jo's voice is strident. I bundle her off and run off before he can see us.

KK asks how I will feel when he goes to the army.

I don’t know now. But I think, I think I'll be quite happy for him to go.

jap doll

I admit it: Everytime I whip out the camera I have a tendency to point it at Jo.

One reason is because she has loads of funny faces and loves hamming it up for the camera.

The other reason is: Man, she's a real Japanese doll of a toddler (to us at least).

Considering that she was the ugliest newborn (they were all ugly but she was the ugliest), it just goes to show that looks change. And tiny alterations in just one feature can alter the whole landscape.

I'm not sure what changed on her face, when we look at her baby pictures we still see her in them. Only now she looks cute. Her face will change a lot more as she grows, loses weight, gets taller. But she'll probably end up looking a lot like KK.

One of KK’s mates once told him that if he were a woman, he’d probably go for her. I reckon he saw the inherent “beauty” in KK’s features.

Jo is that beauty in the flesh. (KK loves to tell me it’s a good thing our daughters look like him and not like me.)

our bag

Kids are endless fascinated by their mother’s handbags.

I remember being spellbound by the contents of my mum’s bag – even till today she barks at me when I riffle through her handbag – and mine are similarly spellbound by mine.

Hence Our Bag, not My Bag.

In the spirit of Demystifying Bag Contents (seems to be a very popular women’s magazine feature but mummy's bags are another thing altogether), here’s Our Bag and its treasure trove of playthings.

Our Bag is an ugly gray Lancome freebie which works because it takes just one zip for everything to fall open so I have quick access. I hate it because it's the most Unlike bag I can ever carry but hey, it works and it's free.(The best handbag I ever had was actually a waist pouch, I’m that kind of girl. But since I have so many bags available for use I’m not going to spend money on a pouch)



Rainbow patchwork wallet. Lu fell in love with and then tore up my Louis Vitton (a hand-me-down from another friend and which is last seen in this post), and KK bought me this one, which I so love because it’s so Me and which works because Lu for some reason does not like as much as the abused LV (it’s a good thing).



The Nokia handphone. A hand-me-down from KK (he’s got his HTC Dream), a rubber band holds the phone together. It’s been dropped, stepped on and battered by the trio. I am always ready to give it out as a distraction.



The Canon Ixus cam. Which I carry everywhere with me and which Jo currently has a tendency to want to use.

Doodle pad and three pens. For me to draw, mostly on Sundays when I am at the in-laws and we all do some drawing together, and which the kids also occasionally guest-draw in. But it’s good to whip out anytime anywhere. Three pens so each of us will have a pen.



Makeup bag with one lipstick and one blusher which I need for gigs and which the kids haven’t got their paws on yet.

Assorted receipts, used tissues, extra serviettes from restaurants. All good to pass to Lu for her to chew on when she makes noise in the car.

House keys. To our family home which is one polished floor away from handover.



Three words: Our Bag is "One Big Mess"!

a #4?

I hate blogging without photos.

But in the absence of any graphic stimulation, here’s as stimulating a question as any: Will I have a #4?

I have been asked, many many many times. So when is #4?

If I look at history, my #4 would be getting made around now and be born sometime in March or April 2010. Well, it happened twice.

But I always roll my eyes and say No Bloody Way.

KK has different ideas. Not that he is actively pushing for a #4 – sorry didn’t mean to be so corny – but on the odd occasion after rumbling around with Day, he gives me the eye and says it’d be nice to have two little boys.

He thinks two boys and two girls would be harmony. I think it'd be poverty. Plus it could be a troublesome girl.

I tell him I will seriously consider drastic surgical measures to make sure a #4 never pops out.

Or if it does, I’d have to go the way of getting a helper (or two) and thrusting #4 (oh and #3 and 2 and 1) to her, while I finally cave in and seek solace in full-time employment.

The more kids I have, the less I want to do it.

Anyway a feng-shui master did tell me something about a #4 before. Yes, he did. And it’s not wholesome.

In a nutshell: Definitely Closing Shop!

mraz

Day and Jo are in love with Jason Mraz.

I bought the album for KK's birthday and it's become de-rigeur car music.

Everyone has their favourites.

Especially when I search for the videos on Youtube and the kids completely fall head over heels in love with the hatted one.

This is Jo's absolutest favourite video in the world. She loves "I'm Yours" and earnestly sings along.



Day favourite is this one, with the lyrics so he can read and sing. I don't think I have ever seen him obsess over a song as he obsesses over "Details in the Fabric". He listens to it endlessly in the car, and clicks on the Youtube video endlessly at home. He makes me pretend to be James Morrison as he sings Jason Mraz's part.



He also loves "Coyotes" and "Dynamo of Volition", though not as much as Details.

The funny thing is none of these are me or KK's favourites. It's just him developing his own sense of what he likes.

He's been inspired to scribble little guitars all over and he wants to learn to play the guitar like Mraz.

Actually he's always said he wanted to learn the guitar, ever since he was three and we started asking him.

He's never wavered. He's on the piano now because I reckon it will give him a solid base to springboard onto whatever instrument he wants to pick up later.

* Until I buy myself a new computer I unfortunately have nowhere to download my photos so there will be no photo posts.

On that note, I am wondering what computer I should buy considering that I want the simplest of machines (simple machine for a simple mind) to do just TWO things:

a) Word processing
b) Photo management (download, edit, organise)

And whether I should get a desktop or a laptop. A PC or a Mac.

house stress

Moving house can be very stressful on a relationship, no?

He: I want a big, huge-ass, two-door stainless steel fridge.
She: I want to cart over my mother’s extra second fridge (which was the neighbour’s unwanted fridge)
Result: A big, huge-ass two-door stainless steel fridge.

He: I want a big flat-screen TV, wall-mounted.
She: I want to cart over our old TV which has worked perfectly for six years and which will go on to work perfectly for many more years, considering how long-lasting box-TVs are.
Result: No TV.

He: I want a stainless steel overhead shower so it’s like rain when I am bathing.
She: I do not want overheads. I want a (cheaper) handheld shower with a powerful spray.
Result: A stainless steel handheld shower with a powerful spray.

He: I want a front-loading white coloured washing machine.
She: I want a top-loading washing machine in any colour.
Result: A top-loading washing machine in gray (white is more expensive).

He: These things will last forever. We have to get good stuff.
She: The budget is busting. I still need a bed. And wardrobes. And a dining set. And a sofa set. And oh, by the way! We have 3 kids to think about too!

* Funny I just remembered the first time we set up home in 2002 it was a joyride. Could be because then, we were two footloose moneyed professionals.
This time, ah, only one of us is. I have become a wet blanket, a penny-pinching Scrooge. And I probably take money far too seriously.

interaction interruption

What a dastardly feeling, to be held hostage to computer whims, IT-idiot me spending hours trying to solve everything the D-I-Y way (and failing) and not daring to spend a cent to buy a new comp or pay some expert for IT service because - oh my God! - the kitchen carpentry costs us $2,500.

Right now if you were to ask me, between the kitchen and a new comp, I'd choose the new comp any day.

Unfortunately, in the longer term, our kitchen - currently an empty room - does need cabinets and a sink.

So I'll hold off on the computer as long as I humanly can, for after all I can work on the Old but Still Reasonably Reliable family PC.

But there will be an interruption because of a computer glitch which stops me from transferring photos over from Dead Mac.

Did I mention computers are my downfall?

Please, let one of my kids be a IT genius (and let one be a good cook).

interaction 1

Time for another 7-day interaction series!

Last one was over 1 ½ years ago. With Lu, and with time, the dynamics have changed completely. Kids are so amazing.

Context: Meal-times. Lu is fighting to be recognized as equal to her siblings, especially in the gastronomic sense. She accepts her boring brown rice porridge but once she catches sight of Dee’s exciting fried bee-hoon she makes a beeline for her cheh-cheh.

Lu: “Mum-mum, mum-mum!”

I intercept Lu, shove a spoonful of porridge into her mouth and say “Lulu, your mum-mum is HERE”.

She shakes her head and spits it all out as she walks around me to her sister.

Lu reaches two fingers into Jo’s bowl, picks out two carrots and puts it in her mouth.



Jo: (giggling) “She is eating my noodle! It’s OK, it’s OK.”



Lu reaches out for a French bean.

Jo decides to help her. She picks out some noodles and drops it on the table for Lu to pick up.

The porridge is uneaten, unwanted and ultimately trashed.

aida

We have had a taste of what it’s like to have a helper of our own, and the taste is very sweet.

So sweet that KK has, in tentative testing-the-waters manner, has asked me: Why don’t we get a maid?

The background is, my uncle and his family go on holiday, they do not wish to leave their helper at home, she comes over to stay with us for two divine weeks, and she dedicates herself mostly to Lu.

The difference with Aida is that she loves kids and she focuses on the kids. Gina, who is a bedsheet-ironing household fanatic, usually does not help me with the kids.

In a nutshell, with Aida present, anytime I want, I can dump Lu and do my own thing.

Whether Lu likes it is another matter. She hates Auntie Aida, the sight of her and she goes running the other way. Or she wails. Or she shakes her head so vigorously it looks like she's trying to shake it off her neck altogether.

Aida is great with kids. But Lu has simply come to associate this woman as "The One Who Snatches Me From Mummy".

The only reason why she's quietly sitting on Aida's lap here while I am two metres in front of her, is because Aida bribed her with a bit of food.



When I go out with the trio, Aida – who likes going out, unlike Gina who is home-bound by choice – happily offers to come along and of course she ends up taking charge of Lu the entire trip while I traipse along merrily with the two older ones.

It’s easy, incredibly easy.

I haven’t had to put Lu to sleep – my most hated baby task – in over a week.

And because I genuinely like Aida, it’s been a very nice companionable atmosphere, me and the two maids chattering away, they plucking beansprouts, me eating biscuits, while Lu runs circles around us.

Aida left on Sunday. It was nice while it lasted!