bye, 2009

In the last hours of 2009, I revel in the calm of housework. I fold my laundry as I watch Godzilla get shot down on TV, poke the konnyakus in the fridge to see if they have set and pick clothes and toys off the floor.

2009 is Settling Down.

We set roots into our family home and with Sydney practice behind me, I manage to jaga the three, keep a relatively clean house, cook, freelance write and gig.

There is no one to celebrate the crossing into 2010 with me. KK is asleep and so are the kids.

It’s another year gone safely by.

Good enough for me!

80 %

In 2009 I earned 80 per cent of what I earned in 2008.

Just saying. Recessions affects freelancers.

Unlike last time, I entertain far fewer thoughts of going back to full-time work.

The pangs used to hit every few months.

I haven't had the thought forever.

I have discovered I am quite happy where I am. Which is a dangerous place to be in really, because one shouldn't stay still.

I should continue making life hard for myself, because that's what I've always done and I find it works excellent.

Anyhow. After five years, I think I like freelancing more now than when I started.

It's not great but I like it. I like working for all sorts of clients and bitching with them about certain things, but knowing I can shut it all off the moment I walk off because I'M NOT WORKING THERE.

Then again, I kind of miss having bosses to push me beyond my limits and give me fat bonuses when I deliver.

Then again, I have three very unreasonable bosses to account to day in and day out. (no bonus though)

Which brings me to that other part about when I should go back to full-time work if I really wanted to.

I kind of want to be there when my kids are in primary school? And particularly when they are in secondary school too? Because the teen years were when I teetered precariously and I want to be there when my kids go on edge.

Then again, if it feels right I'd do it in a second. Work I mean. (if anyone would still have me which is uncertain!)

So it looks like Hello to another year of freelancing!

fish out of water

She's crying here because she clipped her finger on the trigger.

But really, Jo is miserable at the pools.

Day and Lu take to water like fish.

I suppose it's part of Jo's overall caution towards anything which she deems a threat.

comedy of disaster

The picture which serves as reminder of the one time where, the naughtier the kids got the harder I laughed.

Lu screamed for a drink. I hooted.

Day and Jo fought over a tall glass of lychee. I chortled.

The lychees, loosened in the tug-of-war, bounced onto the floor. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

Why? Arlina!

Back from Jakarta for holiday and curious to see the kids, she was cackling so hard at their naughty antics – right in the middle of very crowded Bugis Junction - I suddenly saw the funny light.

There really is something ridiculous about the escalation of destruction and complete loss of control, which can be very funny to an onlooker with a great sense of humour.

Sort of like: What else can possibly happen next? And when it did, it just cracked us up.

In nearly six years of mothering I have never ever managed to see the funny light. Never. Because it really wouldn’t be funny at all if I were alone. Or with a normal average person who can't see the comedy.

I took me a good five minutes to compose myself.

The kids - Jo still screaming - were very confused.

There I was trying to be stern and then I'd completely lose it.

christmas 09

First one in our home.

The Christmas corner which Jo loves to bits.



In absence of a star, KK keeps bugging me: The tree needs a star. So I put up a star.



Strung with other bits and bobs from school craft. This wreath is from Jo.



Now I shall go nurse my viral flu.

Merry Christmas!

copying jae jae

Lu picks up a pair of Jo’s panties, sits on the floor, sticks a foot into each hole (the right ones) and pulls it up. Inside out.

She proudly parades around the house, droning: “Panties, panties!”



She refuses to let me replace it with a diaper.

Then she grabs hold of Jo’s water bottle, puts it over her neck and drinks from it.



For all her fear over her extreme and very unpredictable jae jae, Lu models herself after Jo.

She has never tried to mimic Day.

annual xmas ling do

Another year at Uncle Ling’s Christmas do!

Lu is now able to waltz around the house quite comfortably on her own.

Day and Jo mostly stick to the TV.

The house is amok with kids.

Screen captures:

Angelika, who is bright as a button, hyper as a bee, and squealy to boot!



She is tickled pink by Caleb playing drums on the stools.



Caleb's sister, the fair and dimpled Danielle.



Baby Joyanne, Janine's teeny tiny baby sister.



Janine with Phoebe and Asher.



The half-assed group shot. We tried.



And solemn Lu.

vera again

Taller and stronger, baby Vera has grown heaps since we last saw her.

She is on the cusp of becoming a big sister! And she smiles at me with a mouthful of big white teeth!

Her full chubby hands – I love holding her hands – are still soft as rose petals.

And Jo, even if the memory of Vera is hazy, still adores the baby.

She stoutly declares, again: “Mummy I like baby Vera. I don’t like baby Lulu.”

Vera’s mummy, May, puts Vera on the mat and, just before walking off, instructs Jo: “Jody, look after baby Vera. Don’t let anyone step on her OK.”

Jo offers Vera her longans, shakes rattles for Vera and helps Vera to strap on her wrist rattle. (She straps the other onto her own wrist)


* Offering Vera her longans

Day, who is visiting Vera for the first time, has no reaction.

He only perks up when the adults – mostly TJC choir folks though I was not from the choir - whip out balloon swords.

He and Ethan then horrify May with a display of boyish hyperactivity – May, expecting a boy, says: “Oh my goodness what am I in for?” – as they jump over sofas, scale tables and speed around the furniture.



On the side, quiet and subdued Valente – May: “I like this sort of behaviour!” – buries his nose in a chocolate cone.

What a handsome feller.

playing host

I decide it’s time to inflict my cooking on others.

I tell KK I’m holding a sort-of Christmas party. I’m having friends over. And that I’ll cook.

He is aghast. “Huh? Er, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Yes, Sir. I love it when I visit and other people cook. Why can’t I do it? I say I’ll do the roast chicken. Because it’s the easiest. I ask him: “I thought you liked it?”

“Well that’s just me,” he says.

So today I have my friends over. Jason and Janet’s brood.

Why them? Sixteen years ago we met in TJC’s Orientation Group 1 and we’re still talking.

Plus their kids have been coming to my place to play. They’re all familiar and at-ease and they all know where to go. Like Benz and Tristan zooms straight to Day’s train set.

Total: Seven adults and eight children.

Menu: Roast chicken with potatoes and capsicum, and konnyaku jelly dessert / grapes.

All I can say is, thank goodness Jason brought fishball and beehoon. Because kids don’t really eat roast chicken very well.

Plus some of the potatoes were hard. KK gave me the raised eyebrow when he got his portion and I wanted to laugh.

And konnyakus, I now realize, are always a hit, even in the hands of the incompetent. The kids helped me with it the night before.



MORE PICS.

General feeding.



Lu and Zoe, whom Lu is always jealous of because Zoe still keeps coming to me!



Jo loves Uncle Jason because they are both rubber-faced. Jason makes a face, she follows. Jason makes another face, she follows. It goes on for a good few minutes.



Janet distributes sweet and party poppers from her "snowman" box.



The boys are all over Day’s trains. They stay in the playroom for hours, only popping out for a peek or two. The train tracks are clearly a draw and it’s a useful accessory for parties involving boys. It keeps them safely occupied.



The whole lot. We manage to snap them.


* Kieran, Kirsten, Tristan, Jo, Day, Benz (Lu and Zoe behind)

I make Jason lug his guitar over and we throw out a few goodies.



The Christmas Song, Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours, Robbie William’s Angel, More Than Words which we played mighty often in JC and which was soundtrack to Janet and Zhirong’s courtship. Here they are feeding the baby!



KK can’t keep his hands off Jason’s youngest boy, who is Lu’s age. He ruffles Tristan’s hair, kneads his sturdy arms, said he wishes he had another boy. (YES HE DID)



Tristan’s mum Huixia is highly amused.

I ask KK why he likes Tristan so much. “What about Zoe? You don’t like Zoe?”

He says, in true frank fashion: “Not really. I think I’ve had enough of girls.”

mouse fix

KK’s computer mouse crashes onto the floor and breaks in two.

He puts it together, tries to fix it, can’t.

He grabs his wallet, announces - “I need to buy a new mouse, I can’t do any work without it” – and goes off.

Day frowns, wanders over to KK’s computer and fiddles around.

He comes over to me where I am reading to Lu and says: “I fixed papa’s mouse”.

I don’t register. I am lost in the world of “Lulu’s Shoes”.

KK comes back with a plastic bag in hand, Day runs to him and says: “Papa I want to show you something.”

The two disappear, then Day emerges. He is beaming.

Next KK comes out. I raise an eyebrow. KK, suitably sheepish, says: “He fixed my mouse.”

I drop “Lulu’s Shoes”. “How?!”

Day’s grin gets even wider.

I ask: “Day what did you do?”

“I took it apart and put it back together and I tried it and it worked. You see, papa, you must try again and again. You cannot try just once.”

The point of this is not that he can fix a mouse. I’m sure it was a case of KK being a careless checker.

But I like what Day did. Pro-actively trying to fix something for his papa which had already been deemed beyond redemption.

And I loved what he said. About trying again and again. I really really really do.

booger eater

In.



Out.



Then the booger-encrusted finger goes into her mouth.

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that one.

She's the only child of mine who eats the salty boogers, with relish I might add. (How I know it's salty is because I once did as a child)

But she'll only eat her own produce.

Now for the interesting part: The act of eating booger is called mucophagy.

An Austrian doctor Dr. Friedrich Bischinger says people who pick their noses with their fingers are healthier, happier, and more in tune with their bodies.

He says exposing the body to the dried germ corpses helps to reinforce the immune system.

He says: “With the finger you can get to places you just can’t reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner. And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system.”

Wow.

school outing

It all started with the hats (the one Day is wearing).

The school gave all the kids hats tucked in brown paper bags for Christmas. (actually it’s really rather sweet and as principal Alexis explains: “It’s so practical.”)

Then what happened – according to Alexis – was the kids started trying them out in class.

She told them: “These hats are not meant to be worn indoors. It’s meant to be worn outside when there is sunshine, like the park.”

Straight away the kids said: But we want to go to the park to try on our hats!

And so she organized an impromptu outing for the nearly 50 kids in the school to the Pasir Ris Park.

Fun fun fun!


* Day with one of his best friends at school, Nikita.

Lovely day except for my two wet blanket daughters who clung to me and whined throughout (I brought Lu along).

lu on her own

Sometimes the baby feels like an equal independent functioning member of the household.

This afternoon I crash along with Jo and Day.

The hot can-hardly-breath weather sends us to dreamland for respite.

Several times I recall raising my head, bleary-eyed, and register that the baby is up and about, pottering around the bedroom.

I cursorily pat the pillow and mumble: “Lulu go to sleep.”

At some point I assume she sleeps with her sibs.

I wake up 1 ½ hours later.

And wallah! There she is in the kitchen perched on a chair, trying to open the top off my Tupperware of Indian kacang puteh.



She starts when I pad in, as if she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She quickly recovers herself: “Mummy ah-pen pees.” (Open please)

She startles me with her derring-do.

Day and Jo, at her age, would have gone down with me. It might have taken them a while, but they would have. Even if they had not, they might not have ventured very far.

She is the most On Her Own baby I’ve had, and it’s likely a product of birth order than anything else.

She’s always had to hold her own with her sibs (whom she mixes with day in and day out sans adult intervention). Most times if I nap, the three play together. But because Day is holding the fort I am more assured.

When she’s on her own I am a little concerned. But it seems she can jolly well hold her own even when Day and Jo are not around.

Goodness knows she has enough practice going around on her own in the mornings when she is the first to wake up.

What does she do? I don’t quite know. If I were awake, I would.

Later I ask her: Lu are you a good girl? (That is the stupidest question to ask a kid but I ask anyway)

She giggles and says: No.

Lu, are you a naughty girl?

She waggles her head this way and that and then spits out: Yeeeee-es!

She doesn’t laugh so much when I make her wipe up her Milo spill.

dream report

I wrote this over a year ago.

And I think I'm at Dream B.

Which is pretty cool because we really got somewhere!

Except the kids don't stay at their grandparents.

Does it work?

Hell yeah. I'm so happy we're on our own, I'm so happy I can be totally kid-free in the mornings if need be.

So in that sense, it's a dream come true!

threesome

That's a Baby Bathtub. The sort that is used to bathe ONE tiny new-born baby.

penang

* Kids at a Penang bus stop

In summary, just three main things to say about Penang (28- 30 Nov):

* The kids now know they have tons of relatives scattered all over Malaysia
* Day really has a wonderfully experimental palate
* IT FELT SO BLOODY GOOD TO HAVE A REAL BREAK

Now for the longish main paper, in point form.

WHY WE WERE THERE

The gorgeous Ying-Ying’s wedding.

My 27-year-old Malaysian niece, the first in her generation (she is Day, Jo and Lu’s contemporary), gets hitched.



Me, Day and Jo head to Penang with my folks and some elders.

Why not KK? I told him to go. He, who hates flying and family dos, said no thanks.

Why not Lu? KK said: “Please leave one behind.”

FLIGHT

Jo’s first flight in her memory. Sydney has been erased.

Incredible how nonchalant both kids were.

Me and KK, our palms still sweat when we fly.

These kids read their books and munched their snacks right through the very short hour-long flight, even when there was mild turbulence.

What got to them was the stuffy ears. Jo: “I don’t want to fly on an aeroplane again, my ears are funny.”



FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY

My dad has four siblings. Three and him came out to Singapore.

The eldest stayed in Malaysia. He has nine children. They all have kids.


* My dad and his eldest brother

All turned up for Ying-Ying’s wedding and suffice to say, my kids and I, were effectively dazzled.

Most times we were all standing around yabbering away in Cantonese: “Who is this? Is this somebody’s son or daughter? What should my children call you? Yi ma? Gu ma? Bak gong? Biu yi? Kao fu?”

At the end of it all, Day and Jo still had no idea who was who. Day’s teacher asked him: Who got married in Penang? And he said “I don’t know”.

I did try to explain but I only got up to the part with the nine children and trying to point them all out.

I do hope they get that they have family in Malaysia, and I do hope they grow to love having a big family and hanging out with relatives.


* Day with Uncle Yew and cousin Felicia

My biggest joy this trip was seeing all the fabulous cousins and kids grown-up.

Here I am with (on my left) the maid who looked after me for the first 10 years of my life, and my cousin (on my right) who married her! And their three lovely kids!



FOOD FOOD FOOD

Come on, Penang and food!

Everything tasted heavenly probably because it’s the first time in a long while I had such an extended period of time to actually eat slowly and savour food without having to rush or wash up.

Day fell in love with the sourish Penang laksa. I ordered two bowls over two days, he finished both off.



And in all our meals of big fish, big prawns, big clams, big oysters, he ate it all with relish.



Jo just kept asking me for bee-tai-mak fishball soup, her comfort food.

MY BREAK

Oh my God. My first time out of the country since our return from Sydney over two years ago.

No housework!

No baby to carry!

No computer!

No mobile phone!

I am the sort of person who would happily throw the mobile and computer out the window, so imagine my joy at being completely cut off in a hotel with no computer and a mobile which does not roam.

What a BREAK.

Waking up lazy every morning, napping every afternoon, sleeping at 11 because there really is nothing to do, not even having to think about anything / argue about anything because the relatives are taking care of the entire programme.

Come to think about it, the me/Day/Jo combination was perfect for me. If KK were there I’d have to cater to him. I won’t care to explain that.

Happy happy happy!

xiao ren wu de xin sheng

Something for a boring day.