side effects of motherhood

The great thing about being Chinese is that we get to celebrate the new year twice in a regular year. So if the first one was kind of meh, that’s ok, we’ve got a chinese one right around the corner, this time with MORE SNACKS! Bak kwa! Ang pows!

I think kids have been learning about the year of the horse at Chinese class but clearly something got lost in translation because Kirsten came home and declared it to be the year of the unicorn.

Truett was all “It’s horse, not unicorn!”

I think I like the unicorn one better so happy new year, you guys! I hope it’s filled with unicorns.

I thought we had mastered the art of going out with 3 kids but turns out that it can still be quite the adventure.

Want to hear about the time we had a poop parade at the mall? Of course you do.

So we were out with all 3 of them one afternoon when we came upon some kiddie rides at Tampines One. We typically chart a course to bypass the kiddie ride ambush but since the husband was held up on a call, I thought, “Sure, why not? Go for it.”

Being in a big sisterly mood, Kirsten put her arms around baby Finn and tried to hoist him onto her lap, unaware that Finn had other plans, one which involved breaking free and making the poop at that very moment. So there they were, in this little tussle, one trying to wriggle out (and simultaneously pooping) while the other was grabbing him by the waist in a death grip. This manoeuvre led to some of that poop getting smeared on Kirsten’s thigh, which in turn led to a monstrous freak out session. As it is, Kirsten gets massively grossed out just by having someone else’s saliva touch her so getting pooped on is high on her list of reasons to go absolutely nuts.

“EWWW POOP ON MY THIGH SO GROSS, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF!!” she shrieked, frantically wiping it off with her shorts.

Truett, who was witnessing the whole thing next to her, started shouting, “JUST TAHAN, you’re making it worse. LEAVE IT ALONE!” Seeing that his suggestions were clearly falling on deaf ears, he tried to make a quick getaway but tripped on the edge of the step and fell face first onto the floor. Some level of yelling took place.

At this point, baby Finn (who thought the commotion was a super fun game) had escaped from his sister’s clutches and attempting to climb all over the other kiddie ride at the side, making cheeky faces while smearing his poop on more surfaces.

I was having one of those brain freeze moments where my brain was struggling to process which situation to deal with first. Do I go for the screamy 4-year-old on in a full on meltdown, the 5-year-old with a face-plant situation or the poopy toddler making poop art in public? There was no way I would be able to haul all 3 of them to the toilet in their respective states, I wasn’t even going to try.

I figured everyone should calm down so I said, “ok guys, let’s all just calm down.”

That didn’t help.

Ok, maybe distraction then. “Look! Baby Finn is making goofy faces!!” I thought maybe it was a good time to stop and take some pictures of my super gross baby.

For some reason, Truett is unable to resist his brother’s goofy faces so he got up, dusted himself off and came to peer at Finn, then started laughing. “Take one of us making pretend poopy faces,” he said.

I was happy to oblige.

Reluctantly, Kirsten stopped yelling variations of “EWWWWW” and came over to let me wipe her thigh with baby wipes. That done, I was finally able to herd everyone off to the toilet without any screaming or kicking.

Experience levelled up but how about let’s never try that again.

One of the best parts of the trip was watching the kids having fun, not just on their own but with each other. They look like the two best friends in the whole wide world and sometimes I feel like I lucked out big time with these amazing front row tickets to watch them be best friends.

It’s a pretty spectacular view.

We were at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party on our last night in Disney World (more on that to come!) and we came upon this dance party with Woody and his pals. Everyone was running in Woody’s direction but these two spontaneously held hands and started twirling each other around to the music.

Somebody hand me a spatula to scrape off my heart from the floorboards. I don’t know if I’ve seen anything sweeter in my life.

Living in a small-ish apartment, hide-and-seek isn’t one of those games we play a lot at home. It’s just not very fun when there aren’t many places to hide in. I have at most 7 decent hiding spots in the house and I can pretty much scan the entire place within 20 seconds.

Sometimes, to make the game last a little longer, I pretend to not see the kids when in fact, I’ve located a conspicuous baby toe in like 2 seconds. I do the typical “hmm, I wonder where the kids are” routine (*yawn*) for a while before making a dramatic show of finding them.

Unless I want some time alone to have a cup of coffee, in which case I do the hide-and-ditch, where I make them hide before quietly sneaking off to do my own thing. That usually buys me about 5 minutes before they get bored and come looking for me and in turn, I go hide somewhere when I hear them coming. That’s called the reverse-hide-and-seek.

The things parents have to do in the name of entertainment.

In recent weeks, we’ve discovered that Truett is quite a skillful hider. It helps that he’s small enough to fit into very tiny spaces but the more important thing is that he’s very creative in seeking out hiding spots. Also, he’s super patient and quiet while he’s hiding – all the qualities of a champion hider. Whenever we play hide-and-seek now, I have to bring my A-game in order to locate him and even then, it sometimes takes me several minutes of active searching before I find him.

And his secret move is called the surprise-hide-and-seek. Wherein he decides to hide without anyone knowing that he’s hiding. Which obviously requires a great deal of patience because it could be a while before anyone actively looks for him. But when it works, it’s very effective.

Just this evening, I was out with the husband for some quick errands and my mom was helping to put the kids to bed when Truett decided that it was a good time to play a game of unannounced hide-and-seek. My mom was calling out for him and hunting everywhere but nothing – she even thought that he had somehow managed to sneak out of the house with us (she was about to call us to check).

Finally, after a considerable amount of panic, she found him in a little corner behind the bed.

Truett = 1

Grandma = 0

A WIN FOR KIASU PARENTING

I think my worst fears have come true and I’m turning into *that* kind of parent. You know, the kind that brings her kids to Popular to buy assessment books as presents.

We were there to look for some kiddie stamper whatchamacallits (What do people call them these days? Chops? Stamps?) and we walked past the assessment book aisle which I usually avoid like the plague. Let’s just say that I have very bad memories that involve this particular aisle and a very impressive collection of 10-year series.

I picked up one with picture of a rocket picture on the cover and mustered my most excitable mommy voice “Guys, would you like to get this really cool book? It’s got rockets WOOOO!! And you can practice your Math at the same time, cool right?” They looked at me dubiously but before they could protest, I was all “Ok, you can pick any book you want from this shelf. You know what? Just pick as many as you want and we’ll get it for you.”

They left the store with 2 books each. I’m guessing they won’t be anywhere as enthusiastic the next time we return to this aisle.

THREADING WITH CAUTION

Every so often, I put myself through the exquisite torture that is eyebrow threading. You’d think that this being 2013, with our advancements in human genome research and our ability to send all manner of animals to the moon, we should have developed a painless and permanent way of removing one’s stray eyebrow hairs from one’s face.

But no, we are still using a length of thread to do the job – the same kind of thread that the uncle uses to cut the egg in my Mee Rebus, I might add. Oh, and did I mention that the whole process is an exercise in pain endurance. In my books, there’s childbirth (pain level = 10), then there’s dentist visits (pain level = 8) and then followed by eyebrow threading (pain level  = 7). The 15 minutes that I have to spend twitching involuntarily while the therapist attacks my eyelids is not my idea of fun.

I AM YOUR FATHER…

The husband looked real pleased as he came home with a Darth Vader mask the other day. That evening, he put on some black clothes, pulled the mask over his face and hid in the kids room armed with his red Vader lightsaber in pitch darkness. The plan was for me to lure the kids into the room with some lame excuse and the moment they walk in, we’d play the Imperial March in the background while the husband does his heavy breathing and turns on his lightsaber with the “whoosh” sound dramatically.

They were both visibly stunned for a moment before Kirsten grabbed her brother and whispered in his ear “Wah, very scary man…” In true Jedi fashion, Truett valiantly grabbed his Luke Skywalker lightsaber and slashed off Lord Vader’s limbs in one killer move.

The force is strong in this one.

I’ve been doing a bit of spring cleaning around the house recently, you know, to get ready for the Chinese New Year and all. Okay, it’s not really because of the new year per se, but because I have visitors coming over and the house needs to not look like a war zone for a week or so. Typically, my solution to this sort of problem is to take half a day to relocate stuff from visible surface areas into cupboards to keep them temporarily hidden but this year, I thought I’d be good and actually clean out stuff like responsible adults do.

What’s that word people like to use? Declutter? Unclutter? GetRidOfJunk? Oh wait, that’s the word I like to use.

It basically means stuffing stuff into large bags and giving them away. I lack a certain sense of sentimentality when I’m in the getting rid of junk mode. If it hasn’t been used for a year, it’s gone. If it’s been under the bed and I haven’t bothered to extract it, it’s gone. If it’s mildly useful but I have nowhere to store it, it’s gone. And so on.

So I had all these bags all packed and left near the door ready to be given away when the kids walked by and saw a bag filled with their old toys.

Tru: Mom, why are all my toys in the bag? Are you throwing them away?

Me: No, we’re giving them away to other kids. You guys have too many toys, how about we share them? Sharing is good right?

He wasn’t really listening because he was busy ransacking the bag. He pulled out a plastic toy chili.

Tru: You want to give away my chili???

Me: Um…yes? You’ve still got like a whole bag of toy food and there’s no more space in your kitchen.

Tru: But how am I going to cook if there’s no chili? You like spicy food right? I need my chili to cook for you.

Me: *sigh* ok fine, keep the chili.

I thought that would be the end of it but that bag seemed to belong to Pandora so after the chili got pulled out, they sensed my weakness and started bargaining for other toys to be rescued.

“What??? My Hello Kitty is in there??” “I need my truck. Daddy bought this for me, you know?” “This is my lipstick!! I like it so much…”

By the time they were done, I had to unpack half the bag for them. So much for decluttering.