Big sister Kate

Kate's at a stage where she thrives on (selective) independence. This is her last evening, insisting on feeding Jake his dinner (ironically, while insisting that I feed her). 

Climbing (too) high

I left the boy alone for a few minutes and from the other room, I heard some sounds which didn't sound alarmingly alarming. But the sight that I was greeted with shocked me! He'd climbed onto the bed, up the box and was admiring the view/watching the cars on his own. This boy, is such.a.boy!

Note: this picture was staged. What really happened when I saw him was run up to give him a tight hug out of fright and relief... then thought that I ought to document this so I grabbed my phone (with him tightly in my arms) then went to place him back again. The boy remained meh and cool throughout this entire process. 

My mini me

Unlike her boy of a brother, this little girl still wants to sleep with me, wants me to hold her hand, wants me to hug her and is a girl through-and-through. My precious little firstborn #love

Sibling love

Tough love

As Kate continues to develop beautifully, the package comes with some pain. Literally, as she trips over her feet – like she just did yesterday (getting used to her longer legs, maybe? Or possibly just clumsy) - or as she throws tantrums and we punish her. While we try our best not to resort to corporal punishment too often in our household, the husband and I do dish out the spanks as and when we deem fit. I know this sounds rather awful, but we don't own a cane (I know I grew up with more than one cane/feather duster in my time) and mostly we smack hands or spank butts. We also think that a little bit of pain to enforce a point (usually after we have tried reasoning or a million other methods that fail) doesn't hurt (hah. bad pun.)

So yesterday night, Kate threw a spat. 

She simply did. not. want. to. go brush her teeth or sleep and preferred to watch TV (we had already allowed her 20 minutes and this was an extended viewing from the original 10 minutes) and she cried and wailed. The husband could not tolerate this unreasonable behaviour because we had given her ample notice; in this case, I had set up the pre-bedtime routine before TV time - "K, you'll have to go wash up after watching TV ok?"to which she said, "ok", during TV time - "K, another 5 more minutes ok?" Again another "ok", and at the point of task - "K, time's up already." - she acted up.

It's tiresome because we do try to be patient but in this case, despite our best attempts, she still decided to act like a spoilt child. 

The husband happened to be the disciplinarian in this instance (I must admit – I am a wimp and while I do my fair share of punishment and yelling, I very much prefer not to because it's too emotionally draining and it's rather unpleasant, isn't it.). He pulled out the works – put her in naughty corner, spanking her hands… It was a tiresome 15 minutes later that Kate calmed down to execute the tasks. We resumed putting her to bed, with extra TLC from both of us as we knew that she's feeling all soppy. 

An hour+ later, after K had fallen asleep, the husband crept into the room where I laid with her and whispered to me, "My heart felt so painful when I hit her. 好心痛。" 

No one ever says that parenting is a piece of cake, but it's truly tough when our raw emotions are laid out too, right beside the whimpering little child who needs to learn. And it really is painful when we witness sadness in our child; it ain't easy. But at least the husband and I have each other, where we can release our pent up frustration at how difficult and tricky it is to be a parent and do the right thing.

Tough love.

Sunday

Watching the skytrain at the airport

Breakfast playdate - boys sharing hotcakes

The girls

Saturday

Making a card - part 1 - Happy birthday Xavier. Kate wrote the words all by herself (some a bit less identifiable than others) and chose which images to stick onto the card.

Making a card - part 2 - Happy birthday Jaz. Kate art-directed the piece, requesting me to cut out a big heart for her to use. And those two little blobs you see are baby Jaz and herself (holding hands).

Birthday Party at Polliwogs. That's hot mama Juls with her Korean superstar Xavier.

Post-party, the kids ran amok in the indoor playground. I think they had a lot of fun! Here, Jake's soaking in rainbow balls.

Kate, going abit mad, spinning. She was truly deliriously happy.

A rare shot/moment where the two of them were together.

Another of Kate's favourites, the flying fox. I swear she went on it 50 times.

My favourite bit of the playground

Knocked out, firstborn

Knocked out, secondborn

Long weekend

Don't we all love them? Ours started with a very sumptuous Japanese dinner last evening. Between 3 adults and 2 kids, we indulged in dinner worth $160. That's a lot of food, to say the least. We then did two quick errands.

Replenishing our craft materials. Kate taking the responsibility to pick the right brush.

Grocery shopping

Today was meant to be a picnic-at-the-beach kinda day. The family had planned this for weeks! Then this morning, the sky looked like this.

And so we all cancelled our picnic plans. But because we had so much yummy food all lovingly prepared already, we just stayed in within the cosy walls of Mom's and pigged out. Then napped. It was rather leisurely, really. Totally different from what I had envisioned of sunshine, sand-play, cycling and water-play.

Wet weather, no outdoor picnic. That doesn't stop us from wearing party hats to liven things up!

We spent the late afternoon visiting the newest baby in our extended family (only a week old). Then visited Ikea. I had grand plans of buying some shelves and all.. but that didn't happen. I wasn't prepared with the measurements and while the new furniture seemed to be possible in my head, I was worried that it would only be good in my head. So I got some simple stuff that didn't cost a bomb, missed the chance to redeem our dinner for free and it was still nice just being around family all day long.

Jake, loving his chicken bone (we did feed him proper food, please)

Another two full days of time with the kids! I'm loving it!

Kate's first parent-teacher session

At the start of this year, Kate started school.

It's the end of her first semester in school (is that what they call it?) and parents were invited to attend a parent-teacher meet. I was looking forward to it. It was simple, held within the classroom and I had some time alone with both her teachers. She has one English teacher and one Chinese teacher.

Truly, the feedback that I received didn't surprise me. Her strengths and weaknesses are consistent as with at home. We spoke about some areas of concern and room for improvement. I was pleased that she's faring academically well. The teachers shared workbooks of activities that they'd worked on in class and it made me smile, seeing that she's absorbing and developing.

Here's one particular thing that caught my attention.

Kate says that she wants to be a doctor. Here, she drew herself with a stethoscope, a white coat and she's (of course she is) wearing pink shoes.

Am terribly pleased and proud of my firstborn. Can't believe she's growing up so quickly!

Jake, the menace

Ok, so menace might be a bit harsh. 

Truly, Jake is generally a good-tempered little boy who clearly expresses his displeasure when things don't go his way. But in typical boy fashion (everyone says it's a "boy" thing), he is such a seeker for trouble. 

Something's spilt? He'd be the first to go meddle his fingers/toes within (though he likely was the one who caused it to begin with). Something's fallen over? If he wasn't the one to have crashed the pile of things, then he'd be waddling there - in his bulky diaper butt - to totally join in the mess (in his opinion, fun). It's terribly cute and endearing, to watch this little meh boy develop with a unique character of his very own. Not so meh anymore, really. 

And this is a good shot to summarise Jake and his antics. Under the table. Meddling with stuff. Quietly.  

All better

After my whingey post yesterday about missing the kids, I made a point to go back as early as I could and I made it back in time to have dinner (just like mostly, yay). And the two darlings made it all worthwhile by clowning about and it was bliss, hearing their gurgles and laughter.

Little things mean the most, and it never ceases to amaze me how much joy and love the house is filled with by their presence and antics.

"I want to kiss Jake!"

MUACKS

Kate, hamming it up when I asked for a nice shot.

Wehweh

This pretty much sums up my mood right now. 

I know we had an awesome weekend (reminder to self: be thankful), but it was still difficult because in between the fun, we were dealing with serious stuff. I was also ill and lost my voice (first time ever) for two days which stuffed up my body equilibrium. This means that I have not been able to exercise and well, I have been pigging out like a, well, pig. 2kgs (& counting, at this rate *ugh) And to top it all off, I had the longest Monday of my life in a long time with me clocking 15 hours of work. I barely saw the kids at all and that sucked. So this face, this wehweh face of my little boy, just sums up the rough-bits of how I feel because the next few days may be rocky-rough, cos there's lot to accomplish! 

On the flip-side.. the husband and I have date night on Thursday to kick-start the long weekend and some couple-time. To celebrate the end of this very-long week (oh man, it's only Tuesday) and the end of his examinations this term.

In a bid to end on a happier note...

Here's a cheery pic to share. Kate drew this yesterday and I'm very pleased with it because she put in much effort into it. Her art has improved tremendously! She painstakingly pointed out to me that she used two colours, her lines are more clearly defined and neater and her face is also clearly drawn and she included a nose too (new addition)!

Lovely weekend

Saturday morning. An early start (for the weekend), or a regular start (no time difference to the kids) - this was at 7.30am. Rise and shine.

Saturday afternoon, 2.45pm. Kate went for her first swimming lesson. We are taking it nice and slow - the coach calls it "water appreciation". I like the term. This was after the lesson, where she happily said "I want to be on the steps by myself". Sometimes, I forget that this mature little girl is not even four yet. I love her carefree play. In actuality, this was her escaping my camera - I was pleading for her to give me a smile but she flat out refused, instead choosing to escape the camera and took great delight in it. I'm glad that she was happy.

Saturday evening, 8pm. We went for a supermarket run. Had dinner with the favourite nainai followed by a huge grocery haul.

Sunday afternoon: 4.45pm. I had this empty carton lying around after a huge milk powder purchase recently; and was inspired to keep it and do something with it after seeing some Moms do up good stuff with paper. We had a bit of time this evening and I took it out and the kids were - expectedly - thrilled. Here, they were colouring the box with lousy crayons/marker pens. Watching the two siblings loving each other is truly one of the best things in life. Oh yes, and a by-the-way point of this shot - shows very clearly that two "knobs" on their heads. They are both "doubles" like the husband - the Chinese say that those with "doubles" are very naughty/mischievous/intelligent!

I decided to use the box to do a doll-house, to house the not one, not two but three dolls that Kate owns. The nainai has been (too) generous and now there are three! So all I did was cut out a door for the box. I thought we needed windows but I didn't even get round to cutting those out. We then moved on to painting cos the kids were itching to do something "more" so this was our (pathetic) attempt. We emptied out all the paint from my original bottle of paint. Definitely need to get (a lot more) supplies.

Kate, the proficient painter. I'm really so proud of her crafting abilities. Jake was more interested in touching everything and I had to hold one hand tightly (to prevent him from touching the wet paint) and the other too to ensure that he didn't flick anything about.

Sunset. This picture captured the one moment of peace in the 2.5hours that we were out on errands. In one (very long) car ride, I rushed about to pump petrol, tapau dinner, buy something urgent for the home, and squeezed in a (very quick) run to the reservoir for them to be out. Highlights of this last-minute drive-out for the kids was probably the monkey-spotting (there were rather many!) and the reservoir. It was only a dismal 20minutes at the reservoir but in that time, the kids got to scoot/sit in a bike/meet some dogs and this moment, was the perfect moment where we three huddled together and watched the waters peacefully - for at least 2 minutes!

Scooting home - K had to do an urgent pee run, we picked up the food that I pre-ordered before and we headed home for dinner. 

It was an awesome weekend really and I love, love, love spending time, with these little babies. Kate's at an age where she can make choices (she actually got to decide that we went to this particular reservoir) and Jake, well, sweetheart Jake is just happy to be out and experiencing things are all great for his development at this stage for his life, so I'm more than happy to bring them places and capture their learnings and laughter.

Ah boy does have quite many faces

Serious face, deep in concentration. Yes, those are beads of perspiration. He's one hottie.

Cheeky face. You can kinda make out his three teeth on the lower gum. He has a forth peeking out right about now. 

Cheeky smile. He picked up this funny grin one day and flashes it when he's in the mood. This wet look hair is au natural 

Another odd face. His fake smile. You can make out his three teeth more clearly here.

Grumpy face - because he has no more food. He'd probably just eaten either a chocolate biscuit or a red bean min jiang kueh. And yes, that's a bead of perspiration on his face.

Puzzled face.

The sister calls this the "Popeye" face. His big-small eyes are exaggerated here.



Crying face. Big time.

And of course, his default, meh face.

Thankful Thursday

Thankful for my family, as always.

The too-awake face of the boy at 6.30am

My heart melts watching the both of them love each other

My favourite people in the world