Spud's 3rd Birthday Bash

If Spud have had the privilege of her paternal grandparents visiting AND throwing her a small party when she turned two last year, this year, Spud has been blessed once again with a home-made birthday cake, complete with hand-piped frosting from her maternal grandmother when we were in Singapore over Hari Raya for a short visit last week.

Imagine that! A three-year old getting a slab of my Mom’s priced family recipe, time-intensive, no-egg yolk-no butter, steamed-for-4 hours- Rainbow Cake  and one of my favourite Hari Raya healthier- alternative cakes, is a treat I don’t even get for my own birthday. (I need to get the recipe!)

What an awesome treat that was!

While Spud didn’t want to blow out the candles and preferring to lick the bottom of the candles instead, she could not wait to cut the cake and sink her teeth into the multi-coloured slab before opening her present from us.

Spud's a lucky little girl  – that was her 2^nd birthday cake in a span of 3 days (the first was an advance joint birthday party celebration with one of her younger friends) with the promise of a 3^rd this coming weekend with her playmates "if she behaves".

Spud licking the frost off the candle

Spud cutting her cake as her Nya-i looked on

"Present! Is it a Cheshire cat?", she asked

Spud and Mr. Cheshire

She then spent the rest of the evening not only playing with her new Cheshire cat, but also chasing my Mom’s British Short-hair around the house as she attempted to smother the poor feline with hugs and kisses. I bet Coco the Cat feels utterly relieved now that  he is no longer victimised by 2 strange kids in his home.  

Spud cuddling Coco the Cat

Squirt wanted his fair-share of cat, too and Coco the Cat was not too amused!

 

Spud turns THREE

[Warning: A very lengthy post]

Dear Spud,

I hate to have to break this to you, but, you see, as our first born, you have been our little experiment. You have to understand that your Papa and I are both rookies at this parenting thing. We don’t always know what we are doing, we are more likely to be wrong in more ways than one, yet insist that we are (mostly) right and with you, we are always, always, always on a steep learning curve.

It feels like it was only a month ago that we celebrated your second birthday. And suddenly, just like that, you turned THREE right before our eyes. It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbow all these 3 years (you made sure of that with your big personality), but despite us being such novice at parenting, we believe that we haven’t screwed up too bad so far.

We marvel at how much you have blossomed into this social butterfly and well-adjusted little tot who is just curious about the world. You have endless supply of energy and I get exhausted just watching you bouncing off the walls. Being quiet and meek are never your strongest points. You are boisterous to the point of being clumsy at times - falling over, getting cuts and bruises all over the place just because you weren’t looking while walking or running.  With the bruises you earned yourself sometimes, I do wonder if there may be people out there who thought that your mother may have been smacking you way too much!

Because you are so quick at grasping things and seem more mature than you are for your age, I sometimes forget that you are barely three years old. Just about a month ago, you surprised us by rattling off your Papa’s phone number while we were at the cashier as we were paying for groceries - all 10 digits of ‘em! You have always demonstrated to us that you have an incredible memory and this recent incident completely blew us away. You were so happy that you got it right and you repeated it effortlessly. We will not be showing you how to dial those numbers on the phone just yet or you’ll be wanting to call Papa every 2 minutes. Since then, I've been rattling off my phone number to you every now and then, as I do think that it is only fair you know your Mama's phone number too, just in case. And, within a week or so, you surprised us again with your incredible memory!

Like your Papa, you have turned out to be quite the chatterbox. You talk about everything and nothing, and you say what is on your mind with ease. Sometimes you get frustrated if you cannot articulate it, but you keep on trying (although not without temper tantrums). You repeat what you hear so often these days, and more than ever, we realised that we have to be very careful of the words which come out from our mouths.   

You are into the princess phase for several months now (a phase which I find to be extremely annoying) and telling everyone you pass by, whether they know you or not, that you are a princess. I smile my wry smile (and secretly roll my eyeballs) every time somebody eggs you on it, and each time I reminded you that you are not, you again insisted that you are. I guess you can keep working on that. I can only hope that you get out of this phase soon because I am so done with this princess crap.

But then again, I realise this is not about me. This is you trying to create your own identity and find your ways about the world. I need to respect that, understand that you are going through a phase and in fact, I should fuel your creative imagination. I promise you I am all for it… as long as you stay away from all those princessy, girly crap which I equate to being unnecessarily high-maintenance. OK, OK. I will bite the bullet for as long as it takes, but sorry, but your Mama has got her quirks,too.

These days, you are very quick to “appease” us with your ready answer of “Already” every time we ask you to brush your teeth or  put on your dress to name a few. Clearly, you haven’t quite figure out yet that your mother is actually able to see if you have put on that piece of clothing you said you already put on. But that’s OK, you are only 3. You will eventually be able to figure out that your Mama can actually see through you soon enough.

You love singing and not a day goes by without you belting out a song or two every 5 minutes. Whenever we are in the car, you would say, “I don’t know how to sing”, every time the music came on the stereo.  You sound annoyed because you cannot sing along. There have been moments when your Papa realised that he’d have to skip certain songs because the lyrics were just not meant for kids in the backseat. But be patient, my child. Very soon, you’ll probably be belting to Green Day, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd and the likes of those classics!

Darling Spud, I know that I have never been your most favourite person. You rejecting me when you were 10 months old for over a year was a very tough pill for me to swallow.  I keep asking myself what I have done so wrong that made you repel away from me.  I want to go into that little head of yours and find the very source to understand what I can do better to make it right. Every morning I wake up hoping that you would come to me first, but that’s like asking for a cow to produce chocolate milk au natural. You would be upset if you don’t see your Papa but would think of nothing if you don’t see me. Sometimes I just want to disappear, feeling unworthy to be a mother, especially when you blatantly refuse to allow me to even hold you, let alone touch you, when you crawl into our bed. When you fell or hurt yourself, you refused to come to me for comfort even when I was sitting right next to you. Instead, you went berserk if I tried to comfort you and you would run away as you search for your Papa, even though he wasn't in plain sight. While I try my best to keep my cool and telling myself that it was nothing personal, I can’t help but feel hurt every time you push me away. People tell me that I could only smother you with love, kindness and to never give up, and I tell them I’m trying so darn hard. Every.damn.single.time. It’s always easy for other people to make comments about what I should or shouldn’t do when rejection happens because they are not the ones dealing with you day-in, day-out…but sometimes Little Spud, it would help if you cut me some slack.

We have come a long way where this rejecting crap is concerned and I believe that both of us are healing in our own little ways. You have actually been quite sweet to me and I thank you for that. Your rejections, if any, have not been as violent, and while there are some pockets of resistance every now and then, I hope these rejections will desist for I am so bloody sick of being rejected and feeling like the “lesser” parent all the time. You are my child, I am your MOTHER and nothing can change that. If you don’t like me, then bloody tough luck – go find another Mummy who would take in all your crap, cook your favourite meals, clothe you and love you all the same the next day!

Now THAT is out of the way….

I know being 3 is tough, Little One (guess what! It ain’t gonna get easier...), and you being Spud would want everything done your way if given a chance. But we know you cannot always have that, and sometimes like us, you would have to suck it up. The last one week had been particularly trying as you upped your ante with your over-the top tantrums that appeared to have come from nowhere. So ridiculous those tantrums were that at one point, I just wanted to burst out laughing because I thought your screaming were just too ridiculous to entertain. You drove your Papa up the wall and tested his patience real good.

Meanwhile, know that I am trying my darnest and as a mother who is on a permanent apprenticeship, I sometimes falter as a parent. I am sure you sometimes cannot understand why I scream at you when you push my buttons. To be honest, I don’t get it either and I blame it on a few screws missing in my head.

I remember that one time I almost, almost, almost hit you with a plastic tail-tub because you made me so, so mad while I was showering you as you were engulfed in one of your epic temper tantrums.  I swear that scared the living daylights out of me!  I then diverted my anger by slamming the tail-tub full-force on the floor…the force was so hard that my hand hurt for a few hours. You cowered away as you wailed, probably frightened at how I reacted. The moment I regained my composure and realised what could have happened had I not been able to control myself, I broke down and drew you close to me. I felt horrible. I realised how much I love you and that I would never want to hurt you in any way. I later apologized to you for my unreasonable behaviour and I am ever so glad that you can be ever so forgiving.

You have taught me so much, my darlin' child. In the last 3 years, our life together is anything but boring. You taught me the virtue of a little bit more patience when I thought I had none left. You taught me that losing my head in a screaming fit isn’t cool because apart from stressing myself out, I achieve nothing from it. You taught me empathy when I thought that I am just an emotional fuckwit and most importantly, you taught me the importance of forgiveness when I thought that I have ruined it all and you let me try again so I can be a better parent.

We don’t know how you will change or who you will eventually become. And till then, we’ll just have to wing it. I want you to have the bestest childhood you could ever have and milk that childhood for what it’s worth. I want you to play till you collapse, sing till your throat is sore, dance like there is no tomorrow, get and give hugs and kisses like your life depends on them and never ever let the pressures of society define who you are. You are learning, and as long as we have blood running through our veins and our hearts are still beating, we will learn and we will soar.

You still have to go to bed by 6.30 pm though.

Happy Birthday, dearest Spud. The best years have yet to come.

A new hope

Something came up quite unexpectedly a while back. While yes, I celebrated my 5^th year anniversary with my current company this year, and yes,I think that the organization has been able to give me enough challenges in the 5 years to a certain extent, I have actually been feeling quite “dead” and under-valued for a while. My soul feels empty and under the new management, I felt that the room for personal growth has come to an end. With the new opportunity in sight, I know in my heart that it is time for me to move on.

In fact, I have, in the last 2 months been serving my notice with my current job. Two weeks after I tendered my resignation, I was told that I had to disclose the specifics to my new employment,citing “non-disclosure confidentiality clause” based on the business that I was working on.

That didn't sound quite right to me, and so, after checking around, it is now safe to say that as an employee, you are not obligated to disclose your future employment regardless of where you are in the world. Unless you have signed a specific indemnity form addressing that, the current employer does not have the right to demand answers as to where their current employee would end up. (and neither do you as a potential candidate is obligated to disclose your salary to your future employer as suggested by this article here).

Although what I will be doing in the future seemed to have escaped to the grapevine, I have refused to officially disclose my future employment. I now have another long, brutal month to go before I’ll be unshackled and boy! Does time ever go so slowly! 90 days to serve your notice is a bloody damn long time; I am convinced that it is a sure-fire way to kill anyone’s soul.

But, there is a ray of hope. In about a month, I will be embarking on a set of brand new challenges with a different, but familiar organization. It is the organization which brought me back to Bangkok more than 8 years ago.

I am not quite sure what I am up against, but this time, it feels like I’m making a strategic move (albeit a slightly lesser package). It feels right. And besides, the draw is that I kind of feel like I am going “home”.

My life journey begins again. Wish me luck!

The ringing cow

Quite a while ago, somebody gave us a tip: use a sand-timer to give little toddlers a sense of time. It is useful to get them to transition into the next activity, and especially during times when we needed to peel her away from the playground when it was time to leave.

It was a simple suggestion shared by a child educator and a really effective parenting tool; one which we haven’t thought of before that fateful meet. We have been an advocate for it since and have gone through 2 sand timers which unfortunately had broken into pieces due to rough handling of the little hands.

And because sand timers are not as easily found here in Bangkok, we had been without one for a couple of months since the last one broke. We then soon forgot about it, sticking to just, “You have 5 more minutes according to the hand on my watch or that clock on the wall.” To our credit, it mostly worked with Spud.

Then came one long week.

It was the week when Spud decided to dedicate a whole hour to finish her meals. She would sit at the table and do everything else but eat her food or she would put the food in her mouth and not chew for 15 minutes or she would put her spoon down after every frickin’ bite and started fiddling with her hair or whatever that was in sight.

I tried being nice, I tried being gentle and I tried giving descriptive positive reinforcements (which was extremely tiring and later become absolutely annoying! I mean how many times do you have to cheer her on and descriptively praising her for every single thing she did – from picking up the spoon, to putting the food in her mouth, to her chewing away – and do it like a hundred times in a super-happy tone as if you are cheering for the million dollar lottery like a lunatic?). Whatever trick I tried, I failed miserably.

It was the week when I was at my boiling point. She has been pushing my buttons all week and now this. The entire family was miserable at meal times, I was getting a little out of control with my temper,  I was completely at my wits end and all the supposedly genius recommendations of descriptively praising in gentle parenting style made me feel like a complete failure. It was the most frustrating week that I thought she didn’t deserve to have any meals served in front of her anymore. That was how mad and defeated I was. 

I ran out of ideas as to how to make her to not only eat, but eat faster, so, when I saw a kitchen timer during my lunch break at the supermarket one day, an idea struck me. I thought, perhaps, I ought to try one more thing: Use a timer during every one of her meal times. If she is not able to finish up her meal within the stipulated time, we take her food away. If that happens, she would not be entitled to have any snacks and she would have to wait for the next meal time to come.

I then bought myself a ringing cow. It was to be a test device to be introduced to Spud at breakfast the next day.

When I showed Spud what I had bought and explained the concept to her, she got excited. We first set it at fifteen minutes (I was determined!).  She finished most of her food but when the time was up, we had to remove the food from her and told her that she could try again at lunch. On the hindsight, 15 minutes was rather ambitious and I was setting her up for failure; I could have actually increased the time. On the other hand, I was also conflicted – I felt that if I had increased the time, she would have seen me reaching out for the timer, and then, she would not have taken me seriously. I felt that it was more important to educate her on the consequences of her food being taken away if she didn’t finish eating when the timer goes off. I then set a time of 25 minutes on subsequent meals.

Since then, there has been some improvement to her eating speed at mealtimes. She understands that she does not have to finish everything on her plate, and while lots of encouragement and reminder in the form of “chew, chew, chew, swallow” like a drill master are needed, I could see her trying really hard to beat the clock. And when the timer finally goes with a loud “drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinggggggggggggggg”, everyone, including Squirt would be clapping and cheering.

My ringing cow is now our best-friend. Spud understands the concept that there’s always time attached to everything we do and it helps her to transition to the next activity without much protest because she knows what would happen next.

For now, kitchen timer has become that perfect little device that tells Spud that time’s up because the cow says so. Not Mama. Not Papa. Not Nanny. It is the bloody damn cow!  Now go argue with it.

Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinggggggggggggggggg!!!

Fun in the office

1 small bull-dog clip, 1 paper-clip, a bunch of multi-coloured markers and sticking 2 blunt pencils into holes on a plastic chair with a broken back made for a very fun day in the office from an almost 3-year old toddler's perspective...

 

...top that up with a little cam-whoring to inject a little bit of fun and excitement to entertain life's simple pleasures of being a kid is just priceless.

While I'm glad I won't have to drag Spud to the office any more since Summer school is over, I will miss this little tête-à-tête we have been having in the last 3 weeks. It is not out of the ordinary, but it has been special.

14 months

Our little 14 month old trooper has turned to be this one affectionate little boy. Every so often, Squirt would come up to me, rests his head on one of my shoulders for no reason at all, and with a little soft voice, he goes, “ahhhhh” at the same time. He would usually rest his head for a good few seconds before he troops off to whatever tackles his fancy.

Sometimes, when we open up our arms as a gesture to request him to come so we could give him a hug, he willingly complies. He would then scramble quickly into our arms, wrestle his way in, pry his feet into our legs if we are sitting cross-legged, and when he finds  a comfortable position, he plops his bum onto our lap for a good few minutes before he  gets himself distracted with something else.

Last month has been a little rough when it comes to food and eating, and as I discovered, it was mainly because he has gotten to a stage now where he wants to do the feeding himself. If I give him a spoon and a bowl filled with a little food for him to practice feeding himself, he would willingly allow me to feed him at the same time. Same goes if I leave him grains of rice or yoghurt melts or biscuits on the table for him to pincer pick them and stuff them in his mouth, he would happily take a bite from me every now and then. Sometimes, he would insist on having the bigger bowl - he knows where I scoop his "real food" from and he will not relent until I give it to him.

I have since resigned to try to distract him with toys and books and what-nots while feeding him and let him make a royal mess of everything (much to the chagrin's of Silver Bullet). I also find it a lot less stressful that way as if I insist on feeding him and not want to make a mess, the affair will make us both extremely frustrated. He loves his mangoes, and has recently discovered the joy of sucking mango seeds!

With only 2 bottom teeth, I am glad that he hasn't shown any signs of rejecting any textured food. In fact, he seems to genuinely enjoy eating grains of fried rice and pasta. It seems that Squirt is enjoying his food and already is eating more or less the same, if not more, than what is sister is eating for her meals in terms of portion. His stomach bulges up so tight after each meal, and sometimes when I carry him right after that, I could hear the sloshing going back and forth in his stomach.

Squirt continues to babble, with the only audible, clear words being said in context, has so far been limited to “Mama”, “Papa”, “Bye” and “Yaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! (said in gusto whenever he achieves something)” He loves playing stack-ups, Duplos  and he continues to improve his motor-skills by putting things together and then breaking them apart again – something which, I remember, hadn’t interest Spud one bit when she was at this age.

Whilst Spud’s more like a dare-devil, Squirt seems to be a little bit more cautious and calculated in what he does. He does not seem as reckless as his sister, and is usually more composed. While he has no qualms with exploring, he tends to carefully tread lightly with the unfamiliar until he is confident enough to do it all by himself.  If he knows that what he is about to do is something that he knows that he shouldn’t do, he would usually stretch out his little hands, pause and then look at you intently in the eye as if he is studying your face while he waits for a reaction. To his credit, whenever we cautioned him with a cautionary yet gentle “Aaaaaaacck….”, he would, 7 out of 10, withdraw his hands from the objectionable distraction; only to try it again 10 minutes later.

As cautious as he is, he has also demonstrated his confidence and capability in climbing over chairs, couches and over us just to get to what he wants. And when he doesn’t get what he wants, he would cry his saddest cry with the most saddest facial expression ever, and as soon as we carry him up, he buries his head on our chest or shoulder. (Doesn’t that just make it an awwwwwwww moment?)

This little trooper has won me over; hook, line and sinker. With his cheery disposition and an always smiling face, Squirt has really been such a joy to have around.

Caught in action while clambering over Silver Bullet, determined to get to the remote.

Aha! Buttons!

Related post(s):
Spud's 14 months update
Squirt at 13 months

An afternoon pedi

Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING beats a pedicure session in the middle of the afternoon at lunch hour to calm your head for a couple of hours.

Notice that lady in the background sitting right behind my pedicurist with a magazine in her hand? She actually had 2 dedicated ladies tending to her for a good full hour - one to comb her down, the other to blow-dry her hair at the same time. Such is the brutal, sweet and spoilt life in Bangkok!

And notice how sometimes, the colours that you pick from those colour palettes provided by the salon always somehow turned out slightly different in shade than what you thought it would be? 
Well...that always, always happens to me.

This time it turned out to be on a slightly pinkier undertone (godammit!), and because it's gelish, I kind of have to ignore that it is a little pink and live with it for a few more weeks.

And oh! Those are my not-so-recent pair of comfy slip-on plats which I had acquired from my last Singapore trip. Simple slip-on wedges like this pair has been quite a rare find.

This one came from Studio Tangs.