little miss contrary

Possibly looking her sweetest and prettiest ever.

These days, however, she is Little Miss Contrary.

All day long, it’s No. And not a flat one too, but a long drawling miao of a “Naaaooow” that goes down the scale.

I put my arms around her at night and she gives me a little slap before turning away. “Naaaooow” she says.

I shove a spoonful of nice wholesome rice in her face, trying very hard to make her forget that she just saw her sister chewing on a jelly. “Naaaooow” she says before chasing Jo.

Jo snatches a toy from her. “Naaaooow” she snarls before smacking her sister on the arm. (of course Jo then screams at maximum capacity right into Lu’s face, which makes Lu cry and me roll my eyes)

Sometimes Lu says it in Hakka. “Um-MAI!” she says when her Por-por (whom she doesn’t like) tries to carry her.

Then again it could be MINE which is another hot word. “MINE!” she yells, cradling the biscuit container she managed to acquire by climbing on a stool.

“MINE!” she yells, as I carry her and she lunges for some tasty tidbit from the closed fridge (which she can’t see yet but she knows it’s there), her chubby claw opening and closing.

“MINE!” she yells, when she stumbles on my mobile phone (which is always lost in the house) and gets her death grip on it.

Ah. I strive to remember her Sweet Days.

durian night

The iconic Indian barber shop in Siglap where Woffles Wu and SR Nathan used to cut their hair, and where photographers loved to go to capture one of the last slices of vintage Singapore (and where Day used to cut his hair) has been replaced by a Durian Café.

Left fallow and rotting for months, when I passed by one day a few weeks ago, I could not fail to notice that the entire façade of the old shophouse had been painted neon green, luminous yellow and hot pink.

Then the stands came out with racks of durians. The final piece was the humongous fake durian which was installed just a few days ago, dangling beguilingly to all the car drivers stopping at the red light to drop in at the Durian Durian Cafe.



This shop has drawn nothing but flak from my father, who goes on and on about what a preposterous business idea it is to try and fleece people into paying to eat durian in a café when they can eat it at home, plus the parking sucks.

But KK, intensely curious, had been bugging me to try it for days.

Tonight, we did.

Sans car (the car owner, KK's friend, has returned from overseas for a week), we pushed the kids in their prams and walked over.



Fascinating place.

With about six tabletops with velvet stools, each table came with its own tissue box, plastic bin (for durian shells and seeds) and the wash basin was most prominent.



Durians included D24s and Mao Shan Wangs. Mangosteens, rambutans and chikus were also present.

In the glass display case were durian puddings, durian Swiss Rolls, mineral water, coconuts and cooling drinks (presumably to dispel the heatiness).



We got ourselves one tiny seed-packed Mao Shan Wang for $10 and two Aloe Vera drinks for $3. KK slurped the first seed, looked at me and said: One is not enough.

We didn’t get anymore, on account of my slightly sore throat. But he swears he is coming back for more of the (probably overpriced) fruit.

Kids? Day ate a seed or two but he wasn’t too keen.

Jo, as it turns out, is not a durian fan. She can eat it if she has to, and smell it with no problem, but doesn’t enjoy it. So she hung on to her Aloe Vera.

* The barber hasn't gone far, he's just moved to the other side of the road.

almost home

Almost home. I think.

I never want to clog the blog with things not related to the kids, but the renovation process has been – in one very understated word - unpleasant.

The kids don’t know, of course. To them, it’s been a joyride.

These two (Day and Jo) have literally been with me everywhere: Buying bookshelves (Book Binders), picking out toilet tiles (somewhere in Bendemeer), buying appliances (Euromark at a Toa Payoh warehouse), buying chairs (Gnee Hong at a Ubi warehouse), buying a dining set (an expat’s house next to the Botanic Gardens), buying a light (Strangelets at Amoy Street), buying mattresses (Seahorse at Suntec).

And they enjoy it Everywhere. From flinging themselves on the mattresses to merrily traipsing all over the expat’s house to Day helping himself to loads of complimentary sweets and drinks at the Euromark warehouse sale, they’ve just had loads of fun.

Us, the empty wallets are a grim echo of our financial state post-Sydney. We move in sans wardrobes, bedframes, study table, TV, etc. KK gamely says: “I’ll wait for my bonus then see how.” Ho ho ho.

With some minor knocking still left to do, plus a broadband and TV connection (Singtel Mio), I’ve been bringing the kids up to just soak it up.

What will possibly ultimately be Day's room. I am most sore that they lopped off six vents to create the door but for harmony's sake, I acquiesce.



Jo snacking on honey stars as the noisy cars and motorcycles trundle past outside. (Yes the perils of living by the road side)



From the toilet throne, I see all the way through to the balcony. And I suppose whoever is outside can see all the way in if I didn't close the door!

plain jane

Day asks me an odd question.

"Mum, why don't you wear necklaces or earrings so you can look nice?"

I want to say: "Erm, because I don't need to impress you or your sisters or even papa, for the matter?"

Anyhow both he and Jo have completely bought into sexual stereotypes. Completely.

Jo says things like: "Boys. Cannot. Wear. Pink!" And she is big on pretty things, hairbands, earrings and the like.

One day I'm sure she'll come up to me and ask me why I don't doll up more.

night screaming

“Yeee… YaAAGH! No… NO… enormous eyes! NO MUMMY NO!”

That’s Jo in the throes of a nightmare.

She periodically gets them, from about the time she was, oh, two?

She tosses, she turns, she screams in her sleep.

Her eyes never quite open, she never really seems to wake up, she just screams the house down for 10 minutes before the wind suddenly goes out her sails and she collapses back to sleep.

Day and Lu amazingly sleep through it. Or they roll around a bit and settle back in. They’re used to it.

When it comes around, is when she doesn’t nap in the day and she goes to bed very fatigued. (Mums will all know, a very tired child does not get a good night’s sleep.)

Or when she goes to bed upset. Or when she is sick.

It could also be night terrors, which from what I know hits kids between 2 and 6 and which they generally outgrow.

She is impossible to wake up during these fish-out-of-water episodes (she thrashes madly) and she recoils from touch, which is characteristic of night terror.

But she also calls out random things like “… Enormous eyes!” (which I am certain comes from the description of the giant in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” book) which tells me that she is having a nightmare. No?

In any case we just stand by to make sure she is safe.

Whispering sweet nothings, touching her and trying to wake her up make her scream louder and sometimes she screams out “NO!” in seeming reaction to our attempts to sooth her.

Day and Lu, if they do wake up at night, they fully wake up and whine for us. It's not a case of what appears to be internalised terror behind closed lids.

aimless art

What does it look like?

Day's moved on. From obsessing over planets to Everything about the Human Body.

It started when he fell down and scraped his knee one day, and I distracted him with a little tale about how an army inside his knee is coming to the rescue.

Then he started asking more and more questions. I threw him another old encyclopaedia with lots of pictures and now his best friends are lymphocytes, killer B cells, macrophages, neutrophils, suppressor T cells and God knows what.

(Again it's all these info-packed subjects which he relishes)

I am hard-pressed to answer his questions because I know nuts, but I try. Read all the boring encyclopaedic info (like one of those dreadful press releases I have to plough through), then spit it all out.

"Ooh! The neotrophil has a big mouth to gobble up the virus! Aah! The macrophage has tentacle arms to catch all the nasty bugs!"

KK quips: "Better he be a doctor than an astronomer!"



Jo's started writing words! She appears to be Little Miss Neat (like Day) with a penchant for perfection.

When she writes with her right hand the words look right (the word "Jody).

When she writes with her left (she then writes from right to left), the words are a mirror image. (the beginnings of the word "Clothes")

There's our whole family and what gets me is she says Lu is a spider with four legs.

That's her right in the middle with her bum sticking out, arms raised, dancing.

medicine lovers

“A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down…”

So goes the lyrics.

I hate medicine. I had so much of it force-fed down my throat as a weak little girl, I HATE it.

Day and Jo, however, love medicine. (which I suppose makes life a little easier for me)

The slightest hint of sickness and they demand for medicine.

I suspect it’s because we withhold it.

By and large, we nurse them through sickness with nothing but water and rest.

KK and I have the (perhaps misguided!) notion that in most cases the body gets stronger when left to fend for itself, and that medicine possibly does greater harm to the body than a garden-variety virus.

Between hearing them sniff / cough and feeding them an antibiotic, its the latter which makes me feel far more guilty.

Day, who very seldom falls sick, has just came down with an awful cough.

He knows medicine will ease the pain.

And so he goes to the fridge, opens it and asks me very nicely to please give him the Rhinathiol because he is coughing so bad and the Sedilix to dry up the phlegm.

Why he knows is because when Jo fell sick a fortnight ago (unfortunately her constitution requires rather a lot of medical intervention accompanied by dire threats of her becoming an asthmatic, which of COURSE I do not want to happen) Day would assemble her medicines, draw out the right amount with the syringes and then feed her under my watchful eye.

Upon request, I do medicate Day.

KK blusters on the sideline.

The rest of the day, Day reminds me ever so delicately when it’s time for his next dose.

I just find the whole scenario of my children begging me for medicine - even for sickly sweet foul-smelling ones whose odour makes me want to retch - very odd.

lu sings

The singing - all of one line - only really takes place from the 8 to 12 second mark.

She has a tendency to clap for herself after every line.

She also gives Jo a little slap at the end. She's like that. Follows Jo in every respect but not in an "I idolise you" manner (the way Jo looked up to Day). Rather, in the "You do this to me, I'll do this to you" way.

day's concert

Performing while people pay attention.

I suppose it’s sort of like giving a speech in public: It can be terrifying.

Playing the violin or piano or acting or singing or whatever, I couldn’t calm my shaking hands, fluttering heart and sheer panic until I was well into my 20s.

I never enjoyed giving a performance and even now, I find it plumb impossible to SMILE when performing. (I don’t mean a group performance but a solo one) I’m just too miserable. If anything I look angsty.

Day shows all the signs of Mini Me.

Last night his music class held a little end-of-term concert in the classroom.

Super-informal, every kid just went up to do their thing while the usual assortment of mums plus a smattering of extras like fathers and grandmothers stood behind the practice keyboards.

Every kid did their thing. Waltzed up, played, went back to their seat.

Except Day!

He clung on to me koala-like. I walked to the front with him, stood next to him, and still his eyes pleaded: Get me out of here!



He played perfectly, albeit in utter misery.

Slid off the seat in a hurry even while the audience was still applauding, grabbed my arm and buried his face in my jeans.

Later he tells me he wants to play with the group. I ask how he felt during the show. “I was scared. I don’t want to make mistakes.”

I tell him it’s good he thinks that way. But that mistakes are good because then he can get better the next time.

I’m not sure it sinks in because I tell him that so many times. Every time he colours outside the line or mis-spells a word or messes up a drawing.

Anyhow, we’re tremendously proud of him because he actually bothered to practise for the concert plus he aced it!

* Lu in the audience

jo's dress

In her entire lifetime I think I have bought fewer than five dresses for Jo.

That’s because we get enough gorgeous hand-me-down dresses. And most times she only wants to wear “big big shirts” and “long pants”.

The other day she picks her first dress.

I push her in her pram, past a cart in Vivocity selling children’s clothes from Thailand, when she suddenly jumps out of the pram and exclaims: “Mummy that’s a nice dress!”

(Nowadays that’s how she says she wants something. She never says she wants it. But she’ll say it’s very nice and I’m expected to follow up with “Do you want it?”)

We amble over and I see that it’s $20 which is alright.

I know once I pop it over her head I’d have to buy it because she won’t take it off.

I look, I think, finally I ask “Do you want it, Jo?”

She nods and raises her arms for me to remove her clothes.

She doesn’t take off her off-the-rack dress for the duration of the afternoon.

Here she is! In the first dress she’s ever chosen for herself!