Another Sleepless Night

There was this other boy who had his birthday celebrated in school today, the last day of school.

The Momma of the boy is super zealous and decided that it would be a dress-up/costume party. But she only informed us on Wednesday, the day before Micah's party.

So I decided to do first things first.

Only yesterday, after Micah's party, I set to work on the boys' costume.

Earlier the boys had said to me that they wanted to be knights in shining armors (Thanks to Mickey Mouse Club House and Sir Goofsalot).

And of course I could only do anything properly, i.e. with no interruptions, after the boys are asleep.

So work began at 12am.



And I only finished at 3.30am.

Sword and shield.
(Oops! Forgot to take photos of the "helmet")

The boys were happily surprised by what "magic" Mommy performed while they were asleep. But Micah got it right when he said, "It's a lot of work, isn't it, Mom?"

It sure was, but I also enjoyed it...somewhat therapeutic to me.
Now I'm dozing off while waiting for the photos to load...
Zzzz...

The boys and their costume in the morning.

The boys at the party.


Have a good holiday, everyone!!

Micah's Party At School

Well, thank you all for your well wishes. The party was better than I expected.

After the last post, I actually remembered where I had kept the stack of photos, so we did the "Sun-walk" in a chaotically organised way. Me looking like I have it all planned, but nervous like up on a tight-rope walking for the first time.

Items and photos used for the "Sun-walk".

Grandma and Myron were witnesses to the walk and the whole event too.

Grandma holding Myron.

There was too much food, because we had specially ordered pizza for a friend dropping in for the party (not a school friend, but one of Micah's favourites and long time friend), but they could not make it last minute.

Micah blowing out the candles on his cake,

with the help of Max.

Then, before Micah was allowed to open any of his presents, he had to hand out the goody-bags. We persuaded him to hang on a little longer to open it at home, as the teachers also wanted to head home and close the school.

10 things in the goody-bag.

In all our excitement, we actually forgot to bring home the boys' school bags and only discovered them "missing" this morning when we arrived at school (I usually leave their schoolbags in the car as they do not have homework. The only thing they carry in their bags are a change of clothes in case of any accidents, and for Micah, a set of toothbrush and toothpaste).

It was a good and busy day.

Thanks, everyone, for your lovely gifts.
:)

Head Spinning

Micah's party is tomorrow....
I am not ready...
The goody-bags are already in school.
Got the drinks into the school fridge.
The cake has already been ordered.
Got Ee-ee to make a pasta.
Got mil to help fry some nuggets tomorrow morning.
But I can't find that stack of photos i got printed at the shop last year that has the boys' photos from the time Max was born...
Maaan! I'm in a mess...
Maybe don't do the "sun-walk"*...
Maybe do a pass-the-parcel game... then I'll have to prepare the game and some prizes...
Maybe play duck-duck-goose...
Maybe....
Arrrgh! Didn't get to pre-order the pizza before their closing time.
Must call tomorrow...
Must pick up the cake tomorrow.
Must remember to bring camera.
Must remember to ask one of the teachers to handle that for me. I'd be too busy trying to get my act together.
Myron and Mil will be there...hope baby can hold back needing a feed till food time.
Hufff.... think I need a drink...
Maybe a back rub... "Gadget-daddy...?"
....

* The "Sun-walk" was suggested by the teacher : walk around a pretend sun to talk about Micah's growth and his loves at different years, one round representing one year. Suppose to bring photos and some items. Like a show-and tell.

Why Witches Eat Babies

If you can't recall, or don't know it, it's the Hansel and Gretel fairytale that has the witch in the gingerbread house that was fattening Hansel up so that she could bake him in an oven.

Anyway,
Quite a few (ladies, not witches) have expressed how they want to sink their teeth into this baby, and here is why:

Myron, 2 months and 3 weeks.

Micah also likes to blow raspberries on his "fatty legs", which I thought look like dinner rolls!!


The other thing I have noticed the last couple of weeks that his eyelashes has grown. Now they are long and becoming more lush like his other 2 brothers.



(Btw, I read somewhere that long eye lashes is a dominant gene, so if one of the parent has it, you can be assured all the kids will have them. :D)

Have a good week, my friends.

Busy Free Nights

I have been busy most of my free night.
Free nights would mean nights that I've not yet crashed with the boys... especially nursing the baby in bed. Oh, that is so comfortable I am usually woken up by Gadget-daddy some time later to burp the baby, who is also asleep and, most of the time, then won't burp.

But this is what I have been busy with, making goody-bags.

This is in preparation for Micah's birthday party in school some time this week.
We are celebrating it a little early just before the school closes for the holidays.
We have invited another friend (not a schoolmate) along, and Myron will also be at the party!!

Anyway,


I have made the bags for the kids (collected some free wrappers over a few weeks, bought the ribbons), but have all the stuff to put them in. Will wait until the night before, as some of the foodstuff might attract ants.


But I have the goody-bags for the teachers ready. :)
I actually added a few more things after I took the shots. Too lazy to take some more pictures.


Oh, I so love putting a goody-bag together.
I love surprising the kids and see the thrill on their faces when they pull something they especially like out of the bags.

That's the goody part for me.
:)

Oh, and last weekend, Micah and Max helped me make the invitations.


We sure had a lot of fun too. The only "set back" for the boys (but a relief for me) was that there were only that many students in the school. The boys wish there were more fun to be had, but I am glad we could tidy up sooner than expected. Hahaha..



Of course I also had to hand-write each invitation with a crayon so that took up some of my free nights too.

Think I will be all excited and anxious as the day draws near. thinking of the food and how and when to bring them in and how to do this thing called a "sun-walk" as instructed by the teacher (see the teachers instruct the parents too. :P)...

Will keep you posted.

Cluck Cluck Hic Hic

Myron is usually very chatty when awake.
He loves to have anyone talk to him, and he will "talk" back.
He is already showing signs of an extrovert, like his first brother.

Myron at 2 months old

That was what I wanted to put up for record, but he seemed totally curious about the camera that's in his face when I tried recording his coo-ing and gurgling. So what you see is actually just
half of the noise he usually makes.

Sink, No Sync

This weekend, we are all out of sync and sinking.
Gadget-Daddy left for Singapore on Friday, leaving our weekend in some subtle kind of chaos.

Out of Sync.
It all started with a text message from my older sister in Singapore on Friday morning.
We had planned for this trip for more than 2 weeks and they boys had been really excited. Up to the very last minute, my younger sister and I were putting together a party pack for the 4 kids to celebrate Xue Han's birthday. I had also stayed up to 2 am on Thursday night packing stuff and filling the immigration card. We were all so so ready to go.
Friday morning, got the boys up for breakfast and changed and suddenly I saw the message from my sis saying her daughter has fever and cough. "You might want to reconsider bringing your kids."

The 4 cousins, CNY 2008

So the drama began with the boys crying, still wanting to go, but cannot go without Mommy and Mommy can't go because Myron has no food source except Mommy and he cannot risk being exposed to some germs/virus because he is too young. We spent two hours talking to the boys, bargaining, etc. (plus having to deal with anxious Grandma motherhen-ing around us all). Finally, Max decided he was going to go anyway* and so we packed his clothes from our suitcase (which was already in the car boot since the night before) into a small bag and handed his passport to his father, who was, actually, totally serious about taking him along, as he believed he could handle him "by himself" (besides there being other adults around, but they are not exactly counted as they are not from our home).

So we Max went off with Gadget-daddy in the car.
Our secret back-up plan was that Max be left at my mum's house when Gadget-daddy goes to pick her up for the trip. (She was getting a lift to go down Singapore to make rice-dumpling for my sister. We had also planned this weeks before.) I will then go pick Max up from there a little later, using grandpa's car, and send Ee-ee to work too.
Of course Gadget-daddy was seriously planning to take Max, as I'd said, but my sister called from Singapore, and again said her daughter is quite sick and we'll just have to wait for 2 more weeks for the school break before we get to see them. So I called Gadget-daddy that we'd have to use the back-up plan (Plan B? C? Oh, I can't keep track).

The whole time after Gadget-daddy left the house with Max, I was getting an ear-full from Grandma about how rash and silly we were letting the little boy go with his father alone. So when I finally told her that we are going to pick Max up from my mom's, Grandma was all too eager to follow along, as if she needs to see that Max still here for herself, asap. Unfortunately for her, Grandpa had left the house for his morning jog (couldn't stand the drama enfolding at that time) without any house keys. So she had to stay home with Myron after all, and that set us back like a whole hour "behind schedule" as it took her time to change, going out to try to look for Grandpa, and then me having to express milk for Myron**.

Micah loves taking photos with baby Myron.

So I finally left with Micah to go get Max and Ee-ee and headed off to a usual hang-out mall. We headed for the pasta place, and were obviously their first customer for the day (who eats pizza/ pasta at 11am?). But the pasta was not made right (they over-cooked the sauce, but we did not complain) and then one of the boys had a toilet accident because he was too buzy playing and did not mention the need for the toilet (which was like 200m away) till it was too late. So we ended up having to buy pants because we had used grandpa's car and there are no extra clothes for them there.

Finally Ee-ee went to work and we headed home.


Sinking in pee.
I was reading Toddlerdaddy's post on potty training his four-year-old and thought, "Yes, we should be making more effort night potty-training our almost 5 who like to have a bottle of milk (another thing to wean of soon) just before bed."

So for the past four days, Micah was doing well, as he goes to bed about 9.30 pm, and then we will wake him up to go to the toilet about 12am before we end our day. Then mommy will get him to go the the toilet again about 6am after the baby feeds. We have been so proud of ourselves for the whole week. Then after Gadget-daddy left on Friday morning, that night, Mommy*** fell asleep with the boys and was woken up at 3 am by Max (who had been sleeping without diapers for about 2 months now) crying that his pants was wet. He was actually sleeping on my bed. Then I looked and saw that the other one had also wet his bed. So, exactly, like Toddlerdaddy, I had to peel off pee-clad boys in the middle of the night.

All these might have just slip from being blogged about if the same incident as last night did not JUST happen (and I had changed the sheets this morning, and will have to do so again tomorrow). After changing the boys I was lying in bed and thinking about blogging this, and thought, Oh, if only there are wires I could hook up to my brain and get the computer to jot down my thought... Then the picture of a cyborg came to mind and it was just too freaky. So I had better just do what I want to do.

Oh, Can't wait for Gadget-daddy to be home tomorrow evening.

Now I am ready to feed the baby.

* Part of the drama/problem was because we made the mistake in saying we will take the boys to school, since they are up and dressed, but you know that's just "Preposterous!" that was to them as they were suppose to go for a holiday to see their beloved cousins and not school. After all, we had told them the day before that it was the "last day of school." And Max is just the least keen kindy-goer any kid could be.


** If you're wondering why I did not just strap Myron in a carseat, which we do have, and bring him along, Well, it would have given grandma another bout of high blood pressure as she is always worried about babies crying and then they might vomit and then choke in their vomit. Plus, it poses too much a danger as it might also distract the driver and cause an accident. Plus we have the other 2 kids in the car... *sigh* I am not worried, really, but I know she will be at her wits end thinking of me alone with 3 boys in the car on my way back. I listen to the old folks too much. If I had insisted on leaving with Myron, I know she would have chosen to come along and leave poor grandpa standing for hours at the front of our gate.


*** Besides the fact that we had had a dramatic morning that started at 7am, and that I did not sleep till 2.30 am the night before, I never realised how much I have been pushing my body to work for me around my 4 guys. So the only reason I usually stay up till 12am is because then I can have some time with Gadget-daddy, usually involving some adult conversations, like reporting what the boys did the whole day from my side, and some ranting from either/both sides. Occasionally we watch a bit of a movie and I am also, quite often, required to go rummage and whip something out of the kitchen.

Mother's Day

A belated post:
Mother's Day was a week ago.

The boys brought this back for me from school as gifts for Mother's day.


They painted the pot themselves. The teachers supplied the plants.
I really love these pots.

Thank you, my darlings.


As for the family event:
We went our for dinner at Madam Kuan's in Midvalley.
The dinner honoured 3 moms:
myself, my mom and Mom-in-law.

Gadget-daddy made us all happy with delicious fish-head curry and so much food we had to pack some home. The fried chicken wings were mouth-watering too.
(Sorry, no photo to show as I was too buzy feeding my 2 older boys and scooping food for my mom and m-i-l who was carrying Myron in a sling.)

Hope all you mums had a good Mother's day.

A Clever Candy

I saw this crazy game over at Tina's blog and, as if I had nothing better to do at 4am, and after my cup of hot Milo, I just had to amuse myself.

All you have to do follow the instructions below, which will amazingly reveal your age without me even asking you using chocolate math!

Go ahead have a go and see! ....

AGE REVEALER CHOCOLATE MATH GAME

It takes less than a minute.
Work this out as you read...

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)

2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)

3. Add 5

4. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1759...
If you haven't, add 1758.

6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number

The first digit of this was your original number
(I.e.., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).

The next two numbers are…..

YOUR AGE! (Oh Yes It Is!)

****

Did that freak you out or what!?
I'm sure someone with a good math brain can figure the trick behind this (tell only if you desperately need to bust this kind of "nonsense"), but for the rest of us it's just freaky and funny.
Let me know what you think in comments if you played along :)

p/s- Mmm... makes me feel like another cup of Milo now.

Happy Birthday Xue Han!

This little boy turns two today.


He is Micah, Max and Myron's cousin brother who lives in Lion City (Singapore).


We love you, cutie.
We will be seeing you soon to celebrate your birthday with you.
Micah and Max can't wait to give you your presents and have you open them.
Myron will be making his first journey out of Malaysia. Oh, so exciting for the boys!!
So exciting for all of us.

Xue Han,
May you continue to grow in wellness and excellence.
May there be many milestone markers.
May you continue to bring joy to the people around you.
May there be many more to come.

God bless you and keep you.

I Can Only Imagine

My dear friend,

I bumped into you the other day and we talked as we walked to your car.

I can only imagine your pain.
I cannot say I know because that would be untrue.
I am not going through the grief you have to wrestle with every day, every night.
The pain that comes like spasms sporadically throughout the day.
Spasms that paralyzes you.

I can only imagine your pain.
I can only imagine how hard it is to sit in front of the computer wanting to blog, to keep a record so you will not forget.
You sit staring blankly at the screen, your fingers occasionally touching the keys at the key board, but most of the time your hands fell heavy and limp.

I can only imagine...
You sitting like a block of wood, unmoving.
But your brain is in a frenzy,
Like a whirlwind, spinning around in a kind of madness.
Time is being rewound and fast-forwarded.
Flashes of places and events.
Voices requesting, squealing, crying, protesting, repeating new words;
Conversations recalled,
How favourite songs were sung each time.
But everything is held by the one same golden strand -
Your beautiful boy.
Your beautiful beautiful boy.

I can only imagine...
You sitting quiet and still,
but your eyes occasionally lights up,
then dims,
then the tears begin to fall.

I can only imagine...
The emotions come like a tidal wave that breaks the dam.
The happy and joyous mixed with the pain of grief and loss.
Regrets. Gladness. The unbearable emptiness.
The tears can't seems to stop.
The pain has no end.

I can only imagine...
You crying as silently as you can, but as much as you can.
Then you crawl into bed to try to rest... or
Then you wash your face and put on a brave front to face the world.

But I can somewhat understand.
Though I cannot grasp the greatness of your pain, I have a hint,
For I, too, have lost a love one before,
But it cannot be compared.
Each heart knows only its own joy and pain.
The rest of us,
We can only imagine.


Here's remembering you and your family:
(Photo extracted from your blog)

The Lariche family at home on Christmas morning last year (2007),
Jien's second and last Christmas with us

Everyone's So Jealous

This is really a post of appreciation, though it'll make many eyes green with envy.

My sister has been declared the wonderful sister and the wonderful aunt by the many moms in the playgroup.

She helps bake cakes and cookies and make pasta for me and my boys.
She did this for the playgroup too when it was actually my turn to bring the snack - made my boys' favourite pasta so that they would eat well.
At one point when the boys were into soups, she would make all kinds of yummy soup for them, especially the butternut pumpkin soup.
She generously buys gifts for the boys, especially books on cars and trains and trucks.
She thinks of them constantly, and there are just all kinds of goodies that she will get for them, if she thinks it'll not indulge them too much, but she does indulge them - just not too much (by her standard).

Because she works near the boys' school, she accompanies me send and pick the boys up :
4 hands are better than 2 when you have to take 2 boys - make sure they have their shoes on - and their bags out of the car, occasionally to have to cross the street, and up the stairs.
On mornings we do not detour to pick her up on the way to school, either on of the boys will ask, "Mum, aren't we picking up Ee-ee*?"

Once, while I was having my confinement, Gadget-daddy was tied up in a meeting, so Ee-ee was called to help out at the emergency: She had to pick the boys up after school and keep them safe and entertained for about 30 minutes before their father could get to them. She took them to a classy cafe for pasta and cake! Our protest is that we could not keep up with her treats should the boys ask for it and think it's a regular affair. *gasp*

Then last night, Gadget-daddy and I went for a friend's engagement party. To find some relief for mil, who would have to handle the baby, we got Ee-ee to come in to play with the boys. She took them to the park, got them showered after that, made sure they took their dinner, gave them a treat and got them to sleep by the time we got back about 10.30pm.

The boys love to sit with Ee-ee during meal times.
You get fed and entertained with a story too.

More recent:
Before Myron was born, she had already bought him 4 sets of clothes.
She also bought me 2 preggy blouses then.
A few days ago she bought me another 2. She knows it's hard to go shopping with my tag-a-long's.

Thank you, Ee-ee for loving us so much and making the world a better place.
You are indeed wonderful to us.
Everyone's so jealous. *wink*

P.S -Thanks too for the conversations we have every morning while the boys are at school: The gossips, the news, the "intellectual discourse" and psychoanalysis of the people around us. It's so good to talk to another adult. Keeps me sane. ;)



* In the Chinese language, in all the different dialects spoken, very specific titles are given to relatives, which will indicate if you are a male/female, from mum's /dad's side, and if you are older/ younger to the parent, sometimes indicating your position in the number of siblings. It also indicates which generation you belong to.
Ee-ee is your aunt on your mother's side, and usually is younger to your mum. If there are a few aunts, they will be indicated by number. Cousins to your parents are address by their name tied to their title.