family meals

There are certain SOPs to family meals, not the every day type, but the special-event, public-holiday type.

Who comes, who does what, who eats what.

I find these SOPs become more important as I age, because one day these SOPs will cease.

With my folks, it’s the BBQ and the popiah parties.

BBQs outside (of late we’ve been having BBQs for matchmaking purposes), popiah parties on the dining table.

Mum does popiah today, for lunch. It’s the sort of event which I will schedule my life around because I love popiah. And she doesn’t do it that often anymore.

I do a slap-on and roll-up demo for the kids.

Day and Jo gamely roll their own popiah. Day eats two with lots of chilli and says he loves it.



Jo eats one with no chilli and later says she does not like it.

Lu does not even go near. She rejects the whole idea of making her own food.

A new family meal which has started since Gugu got married, is meaty BBQs at Ho Choon's place.



Meaty as in, everytime we go, there is an excess of meat which we never finish. Thick slabs of beef and pork, lumpy sausages (as opposed to the smooth, plump ones), heaps of chicken wings.



Then Gugu vainly tries to get anyone who can play the piano to play the piano, and everyone says no.

earnest magic

Day’s latest thing is magic.

The girls try their darndest to copy him.

Jo’s the best. She can lie with a straight face.

Here, Lu tries to make a coin disappear.



She really thinks that wrapping a coin in tissue paper and pressing it with a comb will make it vanish.

Still, I applaud her for her earnesty!

mozzie net houes

Kids made a mozzie net house with three chairs and a clothes stand, and slept in their castle.

In the night the clothes stand fell on them, but no one minded.

They still get a thrill out of sleeping in something they made, and I get a thrill knowing they get a thrill.

I almost threw away the net. I'm glad I didn't!


* It's all quite new to Lu

voting for the president

Today we voted for who we think would make the best President for Singapore.

It's the first time we get to vote for a President.

My vote was the result of daily reading and trying to dig up as much information as I could on the candidates. I knew a lot, and I still wasn't sure. But I went ahead.

KK's vote, this morning, before we went to cast our vote, he asked me a few questions about the four candidates. I told him as much as I objectively could and he made his choice based on what I said. He knew little, he had not even heard the candidates speak. But he was dead sure.

Based on what I said, his choice was diametrically opposed from mine!

Just saying!

attack 2

Six months later, it’s Tata’s turn.

There’s a certain nauseating harmony in the old couple succumbing to heart attack in quick succession, one after the other.

Is it their household diet which caused the insidious build up on the walls of their coronary arteries and veins?

And what does two parents having coronary issues mean for KK and his siblings?

Uncomfortable in the chest, fatigued and food-averse, Tata is rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, just like Nene.

Procedure over and still in intensive care, Tata grumbles in Mandarin behind the oxygen mask: Just like Mother (mother meaning his wife). Don’t know why also.

The kids say: Heart attack again?

Second time round, they seem to have gotten used to heart attacks and, still blissfully unaware of what a heart attack can lead to, are seemingly unaffected.

What gets to them is not being allowed in to see Tata once there. Jo sobs.

The hospital policy is, no under-12s allowed. Which makes good sense, really. Kids shouldn’t go to germ and bug-ridden hospitals.



The Khoo Teck Puat hospital, however, is quite a kid haven outside of the sick areas.

We end up loitering around the hospital for a long time after our visit. KK remarks: It’s not like a hospital at all. They’re actually having fun.

I suppose it’s a sweet end to a bitter visit.

Sweet also because we know Tata will be fine and home soon.


* A very credible and large-ish fish pond with impressive fish species to knock the socks off the kids


* Fish food for $1 per capsule ball




* Just for fun


* Clean and slick food court which prints out the caloric content of your food on the receipts.


* A sculpture just outside the hospital. Lu is sore because she cannot climb up on her own. She rejects my help.


* Searching for flowers


* These flowers! I think they're morning glories.


* A huge drain which made for considerable entertainment when an old fellow effortless tossed slices of bread, frisbee-like, with unerring accuracy to feed the swarm of bright orange fish and turtles.

no squint

This is how to test if a child has a squint: Get them to look at a torch (switched on) about a foot away from their nose.

If the little point of light is centred on both pupils, kid's eyes are fine.

Well that's what the polyclinic nurse did when I finally brought Jo in to check her eyes.

Both doctor and nurse looked as if I were mad when, in reply to their question of "What are you here for?" I said I wanted to check if my daughter has a lazy eye or a squint.

I really wanted a referral if she has an issue, so I can seek subsidized treatment elsewhere, but I think they thought I was a hyper-worried idiot of a mum.

So does Jo have a squint? (gotta look at the pinpoints of light in her eyes)



She did the torch test, the alphabet chart test and another one involving clear plastic blocks.

Diagnosis: Absolutely nothing wrong with her eyes.

I wanted to squeak up that one eye tends to wander around when she's lost in thought. But it seemed over-necessary.

tying hair

It was to my great surprise to discover that KK didn't really know how to tie up long hair.

It seems common-sensical.

Jo's picked up the skill and these days she revels in tying up Lu's hair. This, is her consummate Big Sister role and she loves it.

Lu is, to her credit, generally a very patient and willing model. She comes whenever she is beckoned.

Especially since Jo, in line with her forceful nature, is none too gentle. You know how some people just have a gentle, "nua" touch. Jo is not one of them. I know because she's done my hair too.

Lu has the funniest expressions when Jo is tying her hair.

my favourite moment...

…is when the three of them are quietly doing their thing while I serenade them on the piano.

It’s a bit of a fantasy come true.

hello, erin

Seven months on, Erin’s developed an incredible fringe and an incredible set of lungs.



We visit the little girl.

The fair round ball is very smiley, very tempting, very responsive, and I can’t get my hands off her.

But no. No number 4.


* Keeping still, Erin is wondering why gor-gor Ethan and the two crazy girls are cackling away

The girls are initially charmed at the sight of something new, then the novelty of Erin wears off.




* I am so not used to seeing Lu as the jae jae

Day has experienced two baby girls underfoot so he doesn’t quite bother when he first sets eyes on Erin.

But he is the only one who actually helps to keep an eye on her and dutifully reports when she is in imminent danger.

I guess it's something he does every day.

faces

Context: The other night, while in the car, Jo pulls Day’s shirt, scratches his chest and bops his head – three times, sobs Day - with her fist. The boy collapses in tears. KK, driving, scolds Day for being a wuss and Jo for being a bully. He orders that she be banished to my mum’s place for the night.

JO: Visibly distraught, her eyes well up throughout dinner. Barring an occasion or two at my folks, she has never stayed the night away from us before.



LU: After we drop Jo off, Lu is in throes of glee. She dances in the backseat and sits happily in her Gor’s lap. Once home, the sibs are quick to call Jo. Lu talks first: Hello Jo! You stopped crying already ah?



DAY: Jo’s victim tears in the car on the way home. “But I miss Jo, mum.” He hides his face in the corner, Lu in his lap, until the tears stop. On the phone, he says: Hello Jo, we miss you. Maybe papa will come back earlier tomorrow to fetch you OK?

enbloc off

What a curious crew it was, who assembled in the marquee downstairs. My neighbours.

All came for the meeting to discuss the enbloc offer.

A motley assortment of people, over half of whom I had never seen before. All Chinese, mostly old-ish men, and (my conclusion after the session) fairly political.

When I arrived, no one gave me the attendance list to sign. I think they thought I was someone’s daughter or a maid until someone asked “You’re an OWNER?”. I clearly didn’t fit in and I couldn’t make sense of the undercurrents, knowing looks and many folded arms.

My husband, who had promised to come downstairs, never did. Instead he stood in the balcony and kept rubbing his tummy to indicate hunger.

Occasionally, the kids waved at me.

With mosquito coils burning at our feet, strangers proffering mosquito repellant – the first neighbourly act I have experienced living here - and small ceiling fans weakly rotating in the muggy afternoon heat, there were flare-ups and antagonism aplenty.

Two hours later, the verdict was this: No to an enbloc offer, no to even setting up a sales committee. So that’s that.

But this is what I learnt:

A quarter of all the units are owned by one person. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that if going ahead requires 80 percent agreement, that one person saying no – and he did – negates the whole deal.

Only one-third of the complex is owner-occupied. I now know why nobody really cares what happens around here. Calls to spiff up the complex instead after the enbloc was called off - note TV antenna in the picture above, yes, plenty of people here still use TV antennas - was met with impassive silence.

Funny place, this. But yes, things remain the same!

lulu's abc's

The difference which birth order makes (in this family):

At 3 ½, Day could read comfortably.

At 3 ½, Jo could not read but she knew her ABCs.

At 3 ½, Lu does not know her ABCs.

That is, she couldn’t pick out an alphabet from a pool of alphabets to save her life.

I am mildly concerned, but I defer to school and give in to my baser desires to enjoy her rather than to teach her, perhaps because there will be no more Sai Sai Lups to cuddle and tease. She is incredibly fun to tease.

It’s always been that way with Lu.

Day, very concerned (perhaps that she may end up falling behind like the girl he sits next to in school and whom he is still trying to help out), has been trying to do the job.

His attempts are sporadic and mostly one-off, moments caught between school work and his own play time, but I am touched.

For two days, he flashed home-made alphabet cards, got her to identify the alphabet and kept score on a chart.

He made her a fishing book, presumably to stimulate her intellectual curiosity. He roped Jo in to help out with the colouring. (There's nothing else in the book, aside from the cover, apart from blank pages)



He made her an Alphabet book. So far he’s only done A and I don’t think there will be more forthcoming, but that’s not the point.





Lu, cool as a cucumber, is initially excited and then she forgets all about it. The Sam Seng is not the least bit interested in academics.



Jo, who helps out with the colouring of Lu’s publications, whines: How come Gor-gor only does books for Lulu but not me?

lu's record

Lu officially holds the family record for being the Child Most Willing to Sit in the Dentist Chair.

She climbed up on her own, didn't need any hugging or hand-holding, and mostly looked as if she had fallen asleep with her mouth open, even with all the activity going on in there.


* Jo holding Lu's hand. She dropped it a second later to move to the other side.



How cool is that!

Dear little Jo, perhaps remembering how scared she used to feel, reassured Lu: Lulu, it's not painful, you know. She also held Lulu's hand. But Lu, relaxed as can be, never needed any of it. I think Jo was a little put out.

I am starting to realize that the little one is actually quite Cool. She doesn’t fear very much.

Both girls had their virgin visit to the dentist today. Thankfully, no fillings.

Did I prepare them? Not at all. No books, no talks, no subtle propaganda.

I just decided that the widening black crack between Jo’s two front teeth warranted attention and decided to pop into the dentist who had conveniently opened a clinic right downstairs my home, across the road.

(Coincidentally, I had played the violin at the dentist's wedding!)

First visit, incredible success.

Jo, I thought would argue her way out of the seat, but no. Apart from insisting that I held her hand throughout, she spent most of the time grinning at the dentist.

As for the crack, we will leave it and care for it, as the two front teeth will drop in the next few years.

Factors for dental visit success:

* TV screen embedded in the ceiling right above the dentist’s chair showing the Ice Age.
* Pink sunglasses to be worn while sitting in the chair.
* Pink toothpaste for cleaning.
* Super dentist who charmed the socks off the girls as he showed them his tools and gently tested it against their fingertips (that seems a trick of the trade)
* Stickers at the end of the session.

Cost: Free!

Why? Because it’s National Oral Health Month!

And Singaporeans are entitled to free dental check-ups at 300 dental clinics across the country for the whole month of August!

Go! Go! Bring those kids!

hot, hot ecp

Like an oasis in the desert, BK loomed before our eyes.

Blessed salvation!

The air-conditioning! The ice-cold lemon tea! Serviettes!



It was to have been a nice, leisurely cycling trip, at Jo’s behest. She begged to go cycling, had begged for weeks, and once again, I tried to fulfill her tiny dream.

So what if KK is not around?

Day and Jo can cycle. I will push Lu in her pram.

Doubt set in when I carried the two bikes downstairs and my long-sleeved shirt (don’t want more moles on my arms) stuck to my wet back.

Tired and damned hot already, I thought.

Never mind. Never give up.

More doubt set in when I realized I had underestimated their cycling abilities, and overestimated my stamina.

I had to run. While manouvering the handles of the pram through a crazy umbrella (so Lu would not get overly hot).



It would all have been fine were it not for the blistering hot sun (what IS wrong with the weather these days?).


* Day and Jo in the shade of the umbrella, Lu in big hat

I panted like a dog.

BK! BK! BK!

Of course, the longer we stayed in BK, the hotter it got.

And we had to go back the same way.

Fueled by sugar, I ran. It was twelve noon. In my pink flip-flops, shorts, crazy long-sleeved shirt, cowboy hat and sunglasses, I ran. Lu curled up and slept in the rollicking pram.

The kids, probably taking pity on me, were in top form on their way back.

Way ahead of me, they unilaterally found their way, dismounted, pushed their bikes up a pedestrian bridge over eight lanes of expressway...





... got back on and waited for me by the canal in the shade of a tree.



Home, they got straight onto drawing with nary a pant.

Me, I collapsed with a dramatic shout on the parquet floor and took a few deep breaths before making my way back down and up, three times, to bring up the bikes and barang-barang.

So much easier to do one. Or even two kids. And so, SO much easier if all kids concerned can cycle.

Compulsory course of action: Fix up my bike with the attached child seat for Lu.

singapore's 46

Funny. I’m trying to blog about National Day and I don’t have the faintest idea what to say.

Maybe this: We all enjoyed the National Day Parade. On TV.

The kids and I (KK was not interested) were glued to the TV set for two hours watching the musical. We liked the story, the way we’d enjoy a TV show.

We stuck our heads out near the beginning because the jets and helicopters always fly past the house, but this year they were missing.

And that’s about it. I have no angle.

Oh, one thing.

I realize that in the blog, I inadvertently try to capture not just my kids, but my kids in the context of Singapore.

The places they go to, what they see and what they get to do.

Because I think when they are grown up, it will all be gone, like the way everything I grew up with is mostly gone. (except Bedok Swimming Pool, hurray)

ageing

As the kids grow more beautiful and sparkly each day, we grow duller and uglier.

I don’t particularly mind the loss of aesthetics part of ageing. Never have, and I hope, never will.

But these are a few random things which I have mulled upon in my moments of fancy:

A smile is a facelift. We 30-somethings and above, look God-awful if we do not smile, especially in our photos. There is a particular WP politician, suave and dashing with his longish hair, who recently posted a photo of himself on Facebook taken in a hairdressing shop mirror. His specs were off and he was not smiling. Many, many comments on how tired and exhausted he looks. I reckon he actually looks like that, only people can't see past the specs and that brilliant smile.

It all comes down to bone structure and skin. Skin will be, and is already, my downfall. I have terrible skin and hair. I will not age well. My mother has beautiful silky tofu skin which she has always lamented was wasted as none of it passed on to her trio.

Here’s me, smile-less, at 36: Dark eye rings, pigmentation on the cheeks and nostrils, lots of moles around the mouth.



I do this because when I am 46, I will look at this and say: Oh my God! I looked great!

towel photo

New thing learnt today: Throwing a towel over the head - such that it nicely frames the face and sort of does something good with the light - gives nice photos.

I think it's better if the towel is dark and if the subject is outdoors in the sun where it's nice and bright.

Possibly one of our favourite photos of Jo. She was playing peek-a-boo, lifting the towel to Boo me. Hence the gorgeous grin.


* That's KK's dimple. And his big mouth. And his tiny eyes.

I tried with Lu. I really did.

beadies

I stumbled across what I think would make a fabulous present for little girls (between 5 and maybe 10?): Beads.



Tucked in the basement of the strangely-named PoMo (the former Paradiz Centre which more people know, no?) along Selegie Road, things at Beads and Crafts are dirt cheap for a whole load of fun.

Trays of rainbow-coloured beads in all shapes and sizes, along with special pendant bits and bobs, they go for the princely sum of 10 cents for 10 grams (if I recall correctly).

I grabbed a spool of elastic string and a handful of beads in Jo and Lu’s favourite colours for just over $7.

What we have made: Two short choker-type necklaces, three bracelets and two rings, and we still have a lot of beads left over.

It’s dead-easy. Thread the string through the beads and tie a knot joining the two ends when you’re done.

Lu needed help. So it’s not great for a three-year-old.

Jo did fine on her own.


* Jo's butterfly bracelet. Peg on one end keeps the entire line from slipping off.

Day, after dismissing it as a girl’s thing, could not resist and made himself an, erm, rainbow-coloured bracelet.



I can imagine presenting a little girl with a box full of pretty glass beads and a spool of elastic string, to let imagination fly.


* Girls with chokers, Jo with bracelet and ring. Outfits are not my fault.

OK. Even I had fun.

brain changing

I just like this. A lot.

"Just restricting children's access to the internet isn't very helpful. Instead, I would ask: "What can we offer children that is even more compelling, fulfilling, exciting?" We should be planning a 3D environment for our children [to enjoy] instead of putting them in front of a 2D one."

The context: Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield thinks living online is changing our brains.

A scary but not implausible proposition which makes me very aware that I do precisely that: Go to my room and get stuck to my computer screen, alone, way past midnight.

Because I do this, I am certain my children will do this. What happens to our brains? What happens to their still-growing brains? Is it for the better? Or for the worse?

bike gone

The bicycle lock, as thick as my little finger, had been cleanly snipped through.

KK's mountain bike (apparently a present from me nine years ago although my memory fails me - again) is gone.

The man, who embarked on a cycling to-and-from work regime over a month ago, successfully to my surprise, is dismayed.

"It's a syndicate," he mutters.

I don't know. To park the bike right next to a busy coffee outlet at the mall below his office building, locked to a fence where there are no other bikes around didn't look quite right to me, but KK claims it is precisely the open nature of the spot which should deter bike thieves.

"And there are always people around. How come nobody did anything or said anything when someone comes along and breaks the lock?"

I say, this is Singapore.

The fact that his helmet was stolen a week ago should have sent a signal, no?

He says: "But my bike was locked".

And they broke it.

The kids are chastened. They ask me, many times: Why would anyone want to take papa's bike?

Lu is frantic with curiosity. Why, why, why?

Well, that's life, kids. People take advantage.

5th percentile

The boy is of normal height.

But he is way below the right weight.


* Sucking in to make himself look thinner than he already is.

At 18 kilograms, he has a BMI of 13.1 and I think he is somewhere at the 5th percentile.

Which I think means that in a class of 100 seven-year-old boys, he would be amongst the five lightest.

The nurse doing the school vaccination clucks in concern: Boy, you have to eat more.

I’m not particularly concerned.

But there is one thing of note: At birth, Day was a strapping 3.7kg chap. The "Wa!"s from the nurses popping their heads in to marvel at the big boy and the tiny woman who squeezed him out were, I remember, akin to a round of applause.

From 97th percentile he plummets to the 5th.

So: Big babies don’t equate big kids.

And likewise, small babies don’t equate small kids.