Mandarin

So, I've been trying to speak Mandarin to the children as much as I can, whenever I remember. Christian has reached the stage where he is reading English books really well, but his Mandarin ability lags far behind.

Berries helps somewhat, but I usually do not have much time to revise with him the characters he learns..given that we have less than an hour together each day. One day, I found a rare opportunity to bring out the cards and make a game out of it. I told him the aim of the game is to cover the entire bed with the cards, but he can have the cards only if he reads them out accurately. That silly boy actually bought into the game (I wonder how long this gullibility will last).

I shall try to be more creative and come up with more games like that, seeing how he enjoys the challenge and thrill..

Let's go to the beach

One of the children's favourite song to dance and bounce around to is "Let's go to the beach".

It's a repetitive ditty (as most kids songs are), and it goes like that:

Let's go to the beach
It's a sunny, sunny day today..
Let's go to the beach
It's a sunny sunny day today.

Christian hadn't been to his favourite beach in a while, so we decided to take the opportunity one day when it was sunny and we didn't have swim class to go to. The kids were so delighted! Christian dug around in the sand and played with the sand machines at Siloso beach, while Calista mostly watched. I took shelter in the shade, while feeling grateful that P was so hands-on. =P

Christian the Protector

Yesterday, I brought the children down to the playground cos I was home early (took time off to be at the doc's with Christian to discuss allergy testing, but that's a topic for another post).

They ran around and I hung around watching them. Suddenly, I saw Christian running right in front of his sister, standing there with his arms wide open, before noticing that there was a little toddler who was being chided by his mum. I figured out that the toddler must have tried to hit Calista. I smiled at how protective he was of her, and told him how proud I was. He was ever vigilant, and when the toddler didn't give up and tried hitting her again, there Christian went again, putting himself between her and the toddler, shielding her with his body.

Ahh.. this reminds me of that time when he shielded me at the playground too. He has the makings of a gentleman :)

Din Tai Fung

One of our favourite restaurants is Din Tai Fung. I really wish they had a loyalty program because we would definitely chalk up many points and redeem that for lots of free meals if they had one.

One would not anticipate that a Taiwanese dumpling restaurant would be family friendly, but they certainly are, offering cute children cutlery which never fail to excite my children, and child-friendly options. We can specify that we do not want MSG in the food, and request to have less oil and salt in our food, and the servers wouldn't bat an eyelid. I think it's mainly cos they cook individual portions after orders are placed, unlike some other places where food is cooked in large batches.

Our children lurrrve the xiao long bao, which is also very child-friendly in that it is mainly minced meat and easy to chew. Calista can eat 6 on her own. She eats it the proper way too, scooping one dumpling carefully onto her spoon, bringing it close to her lips, piercing a hole in the dumpling skin, sucking the soup out before eating the rest of it.
P and I are pleased whenever we eat there, cos they eat so heartily and we know that none of the usual nasties that accompany outside food (MSG, excessive salt) is getting into them.. ^_^

They certainly deserve their Michelin star for the consistently good food they serve up!

Christian's 5th Birthday

This post is long overdue.. we celebrated Christian's 5th birthday at an indoor playground this year. He had asked for a party, and was careful to specify "I don't mean just bring a cake to school...I mean a party like Andrew had, at SAFRA, remember?"

I considered this request carefully because I do not want him to cave in to peer pressure, and did not want to give in all the time. After some consideration, I realised that we did not have a proper party for him since he was born, and we informed him that if we had a party, the next one he will be having will be in another 5 years' time. I also set 2 conditions for him to fulfill. He had to I) start showering himself and II) stop using diapers at night.

Yes. He is still using diapers at night. I was initially quite ashamed of that fact, and blamed it on lack of effort on my part to train him, but after reading some articles online, learnt that boys are usually slower than girls in this aspect and that night toilet training really depends on the individual being physiologically ready - the bladder must trigger a signal to the brain and wake the child up.. So I stopped putting pressure on him, and thought he'll be ready when his diaper finally stops being wet in the morning.

As for party venues, I had considered having a sports party organised by Shaws, a pirate ship party at Sentosa, and a simple indoor party. I settled for the last cos not all kids might enjoy the sports party (especially the girls in his class?) and also cos my friend pointed out "How are you going to top it if you go for the pirate ship party straightaway?"

So we settled on Fidgets, which looks pretty awesome to me, but was a little inconvenient in its location. It's at Bukit Timah, Turf City which I discovered to be a rather family-friendly place, but not so friendly to those without cars.

Christian had also asked for an Elmo cake and so I looked hard for one. It was tough to find a baker who would do a fresh cream Elmo cake, but I eventually managed to find one who would customise it for me at a very reasonable price.

Here's a few pictures of the big day.. (P and I kept thinking (much like typical parents) "we've never had such a party for ourselves..kids these days are so fortunate..")

Christian certainly looked like he enjoyed himself, playing with his classmates in a different environment, and being the star of the day. We are so happy that he has reached this milestone! Half a decade.. only 3 more of these to go, before he is a full-grown adult.. sigh.

Thank you darling for being such a wonderful son..you are so beautiful and precious to us and we love you more than you can imagine.

Photoshoot 2013 (Part I)

P had a sudden impulse to have a family photoshoot.. I think he was just staring at the kids one day, thought to himself "they are growing so fast", and suggested we go have some photos taken because "that's all we will have to look back on when we grow old and they leave us.." Haha.

So the Chairman comes up with the proposal and the Family CEO (i.e. ME) executes the plan. I looked around some websites, got a few quotes and found that the professionals look really good, but charge exorbitant (in my opinion) prices for the return of all images. And so we looked out for deal coupons. What a lifesaver. We bought 2 coupons, one for an indoor shoot and one for outdoors. I timed the shoots a month apart, to hedge against bad hair days / bad skin week / illness etc.

The indoor shoot was not great.. the photographer had no initiative, no novel suggestions, and kept harping on the fact that Calista refused to smile, even though we told him we were fine with her being her usual moody self in the pictures. We managed to get a few decent photos though, and P thought that it was time well spent. We had fun bonding during the 1 hour, and still had photos to show for it!

More photos from the outdoor shoot coming up in 4 weeks!

Updates (Calista)

 

It’s been a while since I last blogged..it’s hard to find the time and energy to do so these days, but the kids are growing up so quickly I feel wistful, and think I need to capture some of this down somehow.

For mothers, making time usually means forsaking sleep, and that is why I am up an hour earlier than usual.

Calista is now 2 years, almost-4 months. She surprises me with how long she has grown, how she speaks in complete (albeit slightly ungrammatical) sentences.

I called home from work yesterday, cos I called earlier to ask my mum something and heard her voice in the background asking “Is it DADdy???” (Typical daughter-father bias.)

When I called to speak with her, she told me “Mama I want you to read storybook to me…! This one..”

1) She thinks I can see the book she is holding, even though I am not there. Everything is still magical and possible to her.

2) Her mandarin active vocabulary is almost non-existent, other than “baobao” (carry). She speaks almost exclusively in English despite me trying my best to speak Mandarin to her.

My brother is so amused by Calista…her cries often disturb his sleep, and when he asked “Who cried earlier?” she would unashamedly do a “mock-cry” for him.

She is ending playgroup soon, and just attended orientation at her brother’s school, in preparation of going Nursery 1 next year. To think that when I first checked out Christian’s school, she was still comfortably ensconced in my tummy! Sigh.

She enjoyed school, and didn’t shed a tear…it appears that boys are usually the more clingy, crying sort when it comes to separation from familiar surroundings / caretakers.

Not much else has changed, except that her appetite increased, she’s grown taller, has longer hair, has larger eyes, and thus a less-prominent nose. Everybody says she looks like a female version of Christian, but I am not quite able to see it which is ironic given that I stare at them everyday, but maybe precisely cos that is the case.

She is exceedingly vain and has a healthy self-esteem. Loves to dress up and preen in front of the mirror, or show off to us. Made me laugh the other day when she pinched her nose, and moved her fingers to the sofa, saying “I put pretty there ok, you take care”.

Has a soft spot for soft toys and little animals. All I need to do to get her to be quiet is to pretend some soft toy is sleeping. She can usually be tricked into long cuddles by a whine or two from me :)

Her favourite song used to be “Happy Birthday” and I would love at how she valiantly tries to sing the third sentence “Happy BIRTH-day” which goes hiigh up, as if her voice was cracking. The song of the month seems to be the ABC song though. She can remember every bit although she mumbles her way through “LMNOP”.

She’s also into numbers now and can count properly (ie. point to one object at a time as she goes 1 – 2 – 3 –4 ). Can’t recognise the digits yet, but i am in no hurry to try since I know she’ll get there and there’s no point duplicating what the teachers will be teaching her anyway.

Sigh. She is the sweetest darling, who increasingly reminds me of myself when I was young, every day. We are so so glad she chose us to be her parents and decided to come into our lives.