Sow a bean... Reap a bean...

28 Dec 09 - "Sow a Bean, Harvest a Bean. Sow a Melon, Harvest a Melon".... The last time someone said that in my face 17 years back, i almost ended up punching him (yes.. i did have a history of violence at every stage of my life..) I was pretty upset after scoring badly for my A-Math paper. That was when one of my classmates, who obviously scored much better, said this to me. I was young and angry and attributed my poor results to bad luck then. 17 years on, i am going to, for the record, justify my classmate's statement.

After taking a week's leave to help out with house hold chores and to spend time with the kids, I realise that my popularity score with the kids have improved drastically. Prior to that, I have, at times, felt obsolete especially with minimal involvement in the kids' daily routines. To the kids, I was probably just a weekend Dad who would occasionally bathe & feed them and bring them out once in a blue moon.

My responsibility, as described to them very often, was to earn $$ to pay for their school fees and buy toys. How appropriate, don't you think?? In return for my 'hard work', I occasionally get hugs and kisses from the kids, usually before they sleep. At times, I did feel a little bit disconnected with my family - as in, I had no idea what's on going in their schedule and same the other way round. My primary concern was that they are in safe hands and well taken care of by TT & the maid. This, i believe, was the old concept of my previous generation dads as well.

The one week of interaction - which involves bathing them twice a day, sharing our meals together, thrice the amount of silly jokes & conversations we normally have, bringing them out shopping & to the Singapore Zoo, spending an unforgettable Christmas eve evening together, purely sticking my face in front of their face 100% of their time instead of my usual special appearances - have solidified our bonds. The kids appreciate my availability for them and show their appreciation by telling me that they love me and by giving me more little bear hugs and kisses.

Comparing both kids, i think my time spent has improved drastically my relationship with Kayden and slightly for Sophie. Sophie, still very much prefers TT and even commented couple of times during the week that she did not love me because I was 'naughty' for placing her in the naughty corner. I am still unable to put her to sleep nor am i able to pacify her when she cries at night and she still prefers to hold TT's hand whenever we go shopping. In Sophie's case, i believe the limited improvement in our bonding is due to her age where the need for her Mommy is still overwhelmingly strong. If i did not remember wrongly, it was the same case for her brother 2 years back.

As for Kayden, I felt like his #1 at times during the week. He would specifically ask for me to sleep with him and would cling on to my arm like a baby. He would express his love by telling me how much he loves to play with me and that he likes me to bring him out swimming etc. All these words meant a lot to me as they do not happen often.

After this tough week of doubling up as the maid for the house and being a servant to the kids, the invaluable time spent with both Kayden & Sophie was like sowing melon seeds. The amounts of "I love you"s & kisses/hugs received in return was like my harvesting of the melon fruits. As for the differences in my popularity score with Kayden vs Sophie, i see it as not just a simple case of sowing & reaping a melon but rather, sowing the seeds & harvesting them at the right time of the season where timing is a crucial factor.

Passing on Traditions...

Another old uncompleted blog...

Dec 2008 - With a common goal in mind on how we want to bring up our kids and the values we wish to inculcate, it is easy to embark on various projects and plan ahead in hope of shaping our own set of traditions for future generations to come.

We started with "Dong Zhi" - a festival which my parents' generation had mostly abandoned for convenience (i supposed..) and it was a festival which i had long forgotten (needless to say, its meaning and history).

So, on the weekend of the festival, we bought peanut paste and flour, and prepared our very own "Tang yuan". With no training beforehand, we had to rely on our instinct and what we saw from a TV program showing how hawkers prepare peanut 'Tang Yuan' 2 nights ago. It was certainly tougher than we had expected and many of our 'Tang Yuan' balls were leaking peanut!! It was fun though and the kids were free to express their creativity - we ended up with 'Tang'.... snakes....turtles.... and those whose name we shall not mention...

25 Dec 2009 - We had a wonderful Christmas eve dinner last evening. It was exactly what i had wished for the kids - loads of pressies, interaction with their grandparents & parents, a stuffed turkey with good side dishes, a log cake....

The kids had fun. We all did. It was pure joy watching the 2 kids opening their pressies and their facial expressions were magical. Thanks to the new video camera, we were finally able to record down these moments. All the 'Wows'... 'Yeah'.. 'Look Mama! Diego/Dora!'... 'I love you, Papa' (said Sophie as i opened Sophie's pink Dora camera for her). These are moments which i believe the kids will remember for a long time.

And how appropriate it is to pass on traditions and inculcate certain values in the kids. These are festivals which bring the family closer and also present opportunities for the kids to feel 'involved'. Also, i personally believe the built up to these festivals offer lots of learning opportunities to the children. I particularly like the idea of exchanging gifts during Christmas (For the record, I've never exchanged Christmas presents in my whole life) It not only encourage the spirit of giving (and expressing one's feelings/emotions to others/gratitude...etc), but also receiving (not just in terms of pressies but the graceful act of being receptive to other persons' love..etc) These cannot be taught in classrooms nor via lecturing but through experience. And indeed, these are things we ought to experience when we are young, otherwise, it would be almost impossible to teach when the kids are older.

btw, TT has taken annual leave from blogging until end of the year....

I Want to be...

Releasing a very old unposted blog in conjunction with the SEA games....

10 December 2005 - What u gonna be???

"I hope he becomes a doctor"....
"What about becoming a dentist...?".. "eh..not bad.. but better to be a doc... "
These were our conversation as young parents when our first child was born.

As a Chinese saying goes "Wang Zi Chen Long" (directly translated as hoping kids to become dragon - meaning becoming very successful), parents always have high hopes for their kids.

Besides the money & being able to lead a comfortable life, accomplishing something that the parents themselves have always dreamt about but failed to achieve, is as good as dreams come true for the parents.

TT hopes that Kayden can be a doctor. A good one of cos.

What the heck! I've a full list of professions for him to choose from. This list grew even longer after watching the Singapore swimming quartet grabbing the gold medal in the male freestyle relay in the on-going SEA games. All the young male swimmers looked so hunky and delicious (to the women of cos) & it would be a proud moment for their parents to be cheering and watching their kids represent their country. This has always been Daddy's dream (but i only knew about this dream after i became too old to learn anything...) Also, winning a gold medal in the SEA games meant a 5 digit monetary award & this is good money! Besides, having a hunky son with a swimmers body is every Mother's pride & every Dad's dream when they were young.

"I can teach him how to juggle a ball & play soccer when he turns 3", i said... Who knows, maybe Kayden can be a child football prodigy. We can then send video clips of his skills to all the big football clubs in Europe and if selected, TT & i would be due for early retirement and we get to travel across Europe for FREE!!

Dream on! you might say... but hey, isn't this what young children is about?? Not only do they bring to us pain and joy, but also hopes and dreams.

So while TT & I stepped into the realities of life years ago, we inevitably gave ourselves renewed hopes & dreams again by channeling our energy towards our own creation - the up & coming new generation.

Parents as Part time Maids

21 Dec 09 - TT and I have been waking up with body aches lately.....All thanks to the manual labour clocked day in day out to maintain the same (or even better?) level of cleanliness while our helper is away on home leave.

Everyday, i have been busy performing the usual routine of bathing & feeding the children, washing dishes, looking after the plants & our dog, Rusty. The toughest part of all household chores (at least for those I'm in charged of) is to vacuum the house at least once (or sometimes twice) daily and mopping the whole house once every 2 days. It is really surprising to know how much dust, hair & fur accumulates each day, and we need to clean up the dining area diligently after each meal to keep the ants away.

Needless to say, Rusty's fur is one of the main cause for the need to vacuum the house at least once a day. But still, there is really nothing to complain about since Rusty is part of our family and he contributes by being such a wonderful guard dog for the house & kids, and he really tries his best to minimize our work by holding his bladder everyday... serious!! The amount of human hair shed each day is also pretty unbelievable, so much so that i sometimes wish human hair can be as valuable as gold. .. we would have been rich!

The first few days without Gigi was the toughest (as least for me) as our vacuum cleaner was sent for servicing and i had to hand wipe & hand mop the house at least 6-7 times. The after effects of kneeling down with a bent back to hand mop the floor was a near death experience for me.

Compared to our kid-less Jurong West days of weekly house cleaning, this is really a big difference. But still, at the end of the day, when i sit down on the couch.....smelling the fragrance of the aroma burner .... dragging my tired feet across the smooth tiles..... looking at the kids play on the clean floor, i know that all these hard work is worth the effort. :)

TT's Birthday

29 Nov 09 - We celebrated TT's birthday on Saturday.

The kids woke up early. They knew it was their mother's birthday and were well behaved throughout the day. For Daddy, it was the usual case of spending the day without any plans. The ultimate element of surprise is to have no plans and no expectations.

The first surprise of the day came right after the adults woke up. We discovered that the "Jungle Book" show was to start in 1 hours time. Everyone was on their toes and left the house with only 15mins to spare.

The second surprise was that we did not miss the show nor were we denied entry despite being late. The show was OK for me but i felt that the performance was rather commercialized. The actors were trying too hard to interact with and please their audience. I like plays (especially those from fairy tales & books) to be outright raw and innocent.

After the show, we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant nearby and we went to buy a birthday cake right off the shelf in a cake shop across the road.

The third surprise of the day was that TT had wanted a strawberry short cake but i thought it would be more exciting to let fate decide and TT always ask for the same type of cake every year. But to my disappointment, fate was meant to be, there was only one cake available on the shelf and it was a strawberry short cake. TT got to try macaroons for the first time in her life too!

Right after, we went home to put the kids to sleep. The adults went out again to shop for a birthday present. We bought a portrait lens at Cathay Camera shop near Peninsula Plaza and TT simply love the effect of the lens. As usual, practicality was the way to go for almost every birthday for TT and i felt bad about it.

We went home, picked up the kids + Gigi and headed for a nearby seafood restaurant beside Labrador nature reserve. The food, i thought, was disappointing and we did not celebrate the cake cutting ceremony at the restaurant (there were too many people around)... TT had fun snapping away with her camera using the new lens. (The photos were all taken using the new lens)

We held the cake cutting ceremony after reaching home and took lots of photos....It was an eventual day, though short of anything special for TT, i hope the kids & TT had fun.

Father Figure?!?

6 Dec 2009 - Kayden was fiddling with the Corinthian figure of Roy Keane when his Daddy popped by beside him....

Kayden: "It's Papa" (referring to the Roy Keane Corinthian figure and looking at his Daddy at the same time)

Me: "No.. it's not" (refusing to acknowledge the "compliment" but at the same time, feeling gleefully satisfied with my son's good observation skills... thought he must have identified the same "macho"ness traits)

Kayden: "Yes!! It is!!" (Kayden giving a determined look with a smile)

Me: "Why do you say that?" (me getting curious..)

Kayden: "Because it has SMALL body and a BIG head...." (big wide grin from my dear son)

Music

Music.

Such a normal part of life, I do not realise its importance until I got a Shuffle from Hubs (a gift from his company) and I took it running. The right type of songs was the right ingredient to get my lazy bones moving, that once (also, I admit, I thought it looks uber cool to be running with music - thats what ppl do nowadays right?)

Anyway, as stated, it was that only once as after Hubs came back and lectured me on the danger of running with earphones through the neighbourhood at night, I obediently stopped (or perhaps the lazy bones got an excuse to stop, haha).

Whatever it is, I wanna say, music just gives the right vibes to everything. Especially when one is just hanging out at home. Its great company, like a good book.

I am playing SH's track (in her latest post), and it feels sooooo good! Its the type of music that makes me wanna groove along with it, the happy kind :)

There were so many new songs I heard on the road trip in SF, I couldnt just pinpoint to one particular track as I am no longer in touch with whats tops of charts. So its great to be able to just click play on her blog.... Don't Leave Me by Pink.



Just so we dont forget, we were just glued to our car seats as Ryan Seacrest counted down America Top 40. The last 10 songs, the tourist part of us vanished and we both simply refuse to leave the car. I stopped by the Legion of Honors and made her snap a photo through our wind-down window. You know, kinda like, been there, seen that :)

Music, friends, road trip... A worthy and precious keepsake through another chapter of my life.

Guess I can say, music, one is not complete without it.