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kids inc, milestones & musings

It’s too soon for you to be two

June 2, 2010

To the most beautiful little boy in the whole world,

Today’s your second birthday. TWO! As far as babies’ ages go, that’s a huge number. I have to remember to stop calling you a baby because today, you just gave baby-ness a karate kick in the bottom. I told your daddy the other day that I wished you would stay this age forever. You right now is perfect, but then again I said that about you a year ago and I’m enjoying two-year-old you far more than one-year-old you.

Well let’s see. This year alone, you’ve learnt to converse, which is a massive milestone for me. You can actually tell us what you want instead of shrieking. I was really starting to get confused by the three short shrieks (raisins) and two medium shrieks (biscuits OR water). And if I got it wrong, you’d shriek even louder and then we would all end up in a frenzy because by then I would have lost track of the number of shrieks. That was a bad time for all of us. I hope I’m not speaking too soon but you seem to have made it out of the terrible twos. Before you even turned two.

You’ve developed into a cleanliness inspector and you certainly didn’t get that from me or your father. Your favorite line these days is “Oh no, you made a mess!” in that accusatory tone, then you order all of us to clean up with “EVERYBODY CLEAN UP EVERYTHING!”

I’ve learnt not to mess with the clean mode because that time we were running late (again) and you insisted on picking up every single last piece of your 100-piece Megabloks set which was strewn all over the entire house. I told you that it was ok and we could clean up when we got back but you got so upset that I’ve since incorporated time for cleaning up before we leave the house. Thanks, I guess.

You’ve grown to become a really superb big brother. Ever since Kirsten was born, we’ve taught you to love your little sister and you’re doing a fine job of that. You greet her every morning with an enthusiastic “good morning mei mei, you sleep well?” exactly the way momma does it.

You share all your stuff with her and kiss her ever so gently and take it like a man every time she screams at you for no reason at all. That’s the stuff big brothers are made of and we’re so proud of you for that.

You’re sweet and generous and affectionate and I wake up every day asking myself what I did to ever deserve such an awesome kid. Folks who meet you all think that I’ve done spectacular job of raising you but they don’t know that it’s really because you make me look good all the time.

I know I whinge a lot about how difficult being a mom can be and all the sacrifices we’ve had to make in our lives. Most of them are true by the way, but I’ll do them all over again in a heartbeat. Sometimes your daddy and I talk about how maybe we should have taken a few years off to travel, spend more alone time and pursue our own dreams before having kids but then we look at you and we choose you. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend these years not knowing you.

You’re our little sunshine machine.

We love you with all the love in the world and then some more.

Momma and Daddy.

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kids inc

The one where Kirsten found a boyfriend and Tru found a new special power

May 26, 2010

We had our first picnic at the Botanic Gardens over the weekend and it turned out to be way more fun than I expected. We’ve been wanting to spend more time outdoors with the kids but you know me and the sun don’t go very well together so I’ve been finding excuses to head over to McDonalds instead. Well thanks to the camera, I hauled everyone out of bed for our first Sunday picnic beside the Swan Lake together with a bunch of friends so that I could fill this blog with more pictures.

Evidently the kids loved it. Tru spent most of his morning sauntering around, throwing bread into the lake and then grabbing his face and going “Oh gosh, OH GOSH, OH GOSH” when the fish came up to eat it. The husband spent his morning trying to make sure Tru didn’t jump headfirst into the lake to grab the swans.

Meanwhile, baby girl was working the camera for momma like a pro, thrilled with all the attention she was getting.

Halfway through, she got bored and decided to find herself a boyfriend. I knew I’d have to do the talk with her about kissing boys at some point, I just didn’t expect to have to do it this soon. Daddy says we’ll have to buy a large stick to beat off boys when she’s a little older.

I was busy taking photographs and catching up with friends and having breakfast when I noticed that Tru was hiding behind the bench sipping his milo. And not in a “look mom, peekaboo” sort of way. It was a look I’ve never seen on his face before, a big boy look. A flicker of self-consciousness, like he thought if he covered his eyes, nobody would be able to see him. A look like this.

That look right there, it broke my heart.

I’m not sure if he felt like he was invisible, that maybe Kirsten was stealing all his thunder. Or maybe it’s the beginning of self-awareness. The dilemma of craving the attention and yet feeling conscious at the same time. One that gets exacerbated when you have a sibling around the same age. One that I’m all too familiar with.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time hiding behind my mom’s ankles. Mostly because I had a brother a year older who clapped and sang and danced on cue, which was unbelievably cute. Me, I was happy not being seen.

So I passed baby girl to daddy and hid behind the bench together with my little boy. I told him if we covered our eyes, we could disappear for a little while and nobody would be able to see us. Momma would be there to hold his hand if he wanted and only when he was ready, we’d come back and play peekaboo with everyone else. Silently, he nodded and covered his eyes some more.

I think my boy grew up over the weekend.

Sometimes I wonder if being a stay home mom makes that much of a difference. We could always use the extra income and it’s not like I’m an expert on early childhood education anyway. But then in moments like these, I’m just glad that I’m there for him. Even if there ain’t much I can do to really help, I like to think that me being there is help enough.

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kids in motion, kids inc, picture perfect

Advice: Always wear shorts to the playground

May 22, 2010

My all action boy is a playground fanatic. The moment I mention the word playground, he jumps up and down on the spot and grabs at my shorts, as if yanking it off will help him get there faster.

I try telling him that it’s a bad move because people who don’t wear pants are usually arrested but he seems to think that “arrested” is a fancy word for “fun and exciting“. I suck at explaining words because I end up making it even more confusing with words like “incarcerated” and he just stares at me blankly like “are you done talking, momma?“

It doesn’t help that I don’t know the Mandarin word for playground so it’s not like I can talk in code to the husband. Sometimes I try to mouth the words and Kelvin is all like “What, I can’t hear you!” and I end up having to whisper it loud enough for the neighbors to hear anyway so I just give up and wear tighter belts to make sure my pants don’t fall off instead.

But I secretly kind of like the jumping though. It’s a typically Truett thing to do and the day he’s too cool to bounce on the spot is the day I have to choke back the tears a little bit.

This is me trying to go for an artistic shot. I kept asking Tru to give me some emotion and this is the best he could come up with. I’m afraid I passed on the bad-posing gene.

This pose with Mickey, he did all on his own.

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kids inc, picture perfect

Kirsten and spice and all things nice.

May 19, 2010

Took the camera out for a spin at Vivocity with baby girl yesterday and here’s what I came home with – absolute awesomeness.

I’ve never been a fan of the great outdoors, what with the sun and sweltering heat and makeup melting off my face and beads of sweat trickling down my head. But now I can’t wait to get out in the sun because the outdoor light is magnificent. Makes all the pictures pop.

To say I’m obsessed is an understatement.

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kids inc

Call me trigger happy

May 17, 2010

The husband came home with my birthday gift over the weekend and let me just say that it is hands down the BEST BIRTHDAY GIFT I’ve gotten so far. Even better than the time he made me a precious moments card with glitter on it. You know how sometimes you get a present and you’re like “oh wow, thanks for the thought, I guess”. This is not one of those times.

And remember the time I came up with a bucket list? Obviously I still haven’t gotten around to doing any of them, which I’m not entirely surprised at, seeing that it involves stuff like running away and joining the circus. It’s the kind of thing you do at the spur of the moment when all the stars align and you’ve had a lot of booze. Well, the stars have aligned and I’m finally going to start on one of them, so I’m real excited.

See where I’m going with this?

Yes, the husband came back with a Canon DSLR camera complete with a 50mm lens and my goodness, it is exquisite. Jaw-droppingly so. I’ve been caressing it non-stop since it came home to momma and I foresee that this is going to be the start of a very expensive hobby.

I’ve never been a trigger-happy kind of girl. I don’t whip out my camera to capture all those wonderful kodak moments. I don’t hold up two fingers with a peace-sign and flash my pearly whites every 25 seconds. I don’t make people gather and snap group shots at events. I don’t have 50,000 photographs stored in my hard disk.

This is mostly because I take awful shots and I end up looking like Chandler Bing in most photos. I see all those girls with perfect smiles and mine always look like a cross between a grimace and a scowl.

My wedding photo shoot (which was shot by a ridiculously talented fashion photographer friend) was one of the most harrowing experiences in my life. The whole time, he was all like “stop grimacing”, “show me some emotion”, “close your mouth”, “strike a pose”, “NO, DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN” and I was like an awkward fourteen-year-old. I’ve since come to terms with the fact that my best Angelina Jolie impression looks more like Mick Jagger on a bad day.

All that is going to change though. This new baby takes some incredible shots and I am so in love.

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kids inc, stuff best described as not safe for parents, unqualified parenting tips

Boys and Girls

April 27, 2010

I’m no expert on parenting, evidently. Most of my ridiculous parenting theories are a direct result of watching too much TV and other even more useless videos on the Internet. Which is why I recommend that you take what I tell you with generous lumps of salt, if you haven’t already figured that out.

But once in a while, I get enlightened by the experts who actually have impressive degrees on early childhood education and I stop to listen. Then, I pass them along so that I can sound more credible than I actually am. After all, Motherinc is a *serious* resource for parenting and it is my goal to share these wonderful nuggets of wisdom.

You can stop snorting now, I can hear you.

No, really, today is one of those serious days. We’re going to talk about boys and girls. Specifically, their different learning styles because we all know that girls are far superior to boys in terms of sheer mental abilities. We can’t help that but what we can do is figure out a way to make learning as easy and effective as possible for everybody.

Of course, I’m going to introduce the expert to you now. Remember the time I sat down for a forum with Fiona Walker, the Principal Director of Julia Gabriel, and I became very well-acquainted with the mini sandwiches? She’s kindly offered to share her thoughts on topic. So, to summarize, here’s what we’ve got.

1. Girls have better listening skills and a more sensually detailed memory.

2. Girls have an advantage in the language arts.

3. Girls are biochemically less impulsive.

4. Girls generally use more areas of the brain for verbal and emotive functioning.

5. Girls are often better able to multitask, with fewer attention span problems.

Boys, well, they are basically the opposite. Ok, if you really want the details, the male brain is better suited for symbols, abstractions, diagrams pictures and objects moving through space. Boys learn by being physically active and can ‘switch off’ if faced with too much verbal explanation.

exactly what I'm talking about

If you ask me, you’re way more likely to get through to girls by explaining stuff. With boys, you need to keep your explanations to short grunts and hand gestures. Or you can bribe them with raisins to do your bidding.

I’m probably not doing justice to the original version so I’m going to just post the whole thing here and you can read it for yourself.

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kids in motion, kids inc

Kite flying and happy Sundays

April 19, 2010

Anybody else feels like this year is slipping by way too fast? They say it’s a sign of age, when your days roll into weeks and weeks into months and before you even have time to catch your breath, you’re singing Auld Lang Syne yet again.

For us, weekends are the craziest. Every weekend, we cram in all our errands and family dinners and church services and house cleaning and by Sunday night, we’re more exhausted than we were before Saturday came. Yesterday, we decided to leave the dishes unwashed, the clothes unlaundered, the house in a massive mess and brought the kids to Marina Barrage for a much needed break with a couple of old friends.

Some catch up and kite flying was in order.

The kids got bored with the kites after five minutes so we had to abort mission to bring them for some water play. Can’t blame them though, because I got bored with the kites in half that time.

Also, for my soccer roundup, we scored a magnificent goal in the final 20 seconds against Man City, which only goes to prove that all the money in the world can’t buy class. In fact, all you get is a bunch of whiny, spoilt brats who are more concerned about their summer holidays than playing soccer. The even better news is that Chelsea lost to Spurs so the gap is back to 1 point. 3 games left and Chelsea’s self-destruct button has already been activated. COME ON!

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