Out of the Box came 2 Bags

There was the mother of all storms yesterday.

Add to that, I had recently decided to commit myself to being the "Muber" driver and pick JED after school.

It has not been without its challenges and on top of that, my not-so-organised mind had not told them what to do when there was a storm.

So I brought ONE (not two or three as I should have done) umbrella into school to catch them. I found Muffin but Evan was no where in sight.

Eventually he sidled up, grinning and waving two plastic bags at me. He was late coming to look for Muffin because he had seen the rain and proceeded to

a. Go to the library and try to ring me. But the library was closed.
b. Procure plastic bags.

I kind of figured out why he had done that though I hadn't seen anyone with plastic bags over their heads since I, myself, was in primary school.

But I asked him anyway, why 2 plastic bags?

"One for myself and one for Muffin so that we would be able to walk out and look for you." he replied.

He said it would not keep the rest of him from getting wet but it was like the hood of the raincoat. He also promised that he wouldn't suffocate himself (Heedful of the warnings he'd read everywhere about plastic bags causing suffocation). Thereafter, putting on the plastic bag, looking both amused and full of importance.

 

Muffin followed suit and loped the bag over his head though his head being smaller caused the bag to cover his entire face. He proceeded to get a stern lecture from his brother about plastic bags and suffocation (mindful of everything he'd read about plastic bags causing suffocation). 

That he thought to call me. That he figured out a contingency in case I was still outside. And that he took matters into his own hands and tried as best as possible to equip his brother and himself for the possible traipse out into the rain. 

I am speechless and a little bit awed by him. 

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Books in the wild

One of the happy problems we have in the house is that we don't have enough shelf space. Even though we trade books with friends, we go to the library and second hand book stores, we still have enough books to run a library out of our house. With 3 kids of different age or interest, there are a lot of different kinds of books in the house. There are books everywhere. Our dining table could be piled high with books and JED would add on more.

Like I say, it's a happy problem to have.

I love that all 3 read. It's the advantage of having a no TV, no gadget rule in the house. There's not much else to do especially at meal times. The grandparents have complained that it's disrespectful to read at the dinner table. So I tell JED that they can read when they are eating alone but when the family sits down for dinner, there are to be no books.

So, anyway, books, all around.

Friends have asked for ideas on what to get their kids to read and frankly I don't know. I look at required book lists (sometimes the books on these lists need to be re-looked at!), browse through curated lists of bloggers and read reviews of books to get a feel of what's out there but it doesn't always work. A best-seller might be a best seller with many kids but not necessarily JED.

I asked them to pick a bunch of their favourite books right now, books that they might want their friends to read as well and this is what they came up with.

We start with the littlest. Perhaps in the last 6 months or so has Muffin taken to reading on his own and reading chapter books. Part of it is him seeing his siblings do it. He still likes pictures in his books but he's less intimidated by the word-picture ratio skewing greatly toward the words rather than pictures. He likes humour, toilet humour, silly humour, laugh out loud ha-ha humour. His favourites right now are junior chapter series like Eerie Elementary (which he has independently drawn parallels to Harry Potter), the Yeti Files (where he learnt the word Cryptid; a creature that has been hidden and there's no proof of its existence) and ha-ha funny Kung-Pow Chicken complete with all its puns. When he reads, the world disappears and he won't know if you're yelling for him because there's a fire.

It's still hard for him to read. He would still rather play with his Lego but more and more so, when the house is quiet and we seek him out, he's hiding somewhere reading.

Evan.
Evan's an action reader. He likes action in his books. Something has to be happening. His perennial favourites are still the Potter books which I have no issue with but his repertoire has definitely expanded since last year. There's still the silly Wimpy Kid books that he likes but he has also taken to Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider. I had a lot to do with that because I liked them too and I would read them and tell him excitedly what was going to happen in the book I was reading. And he would read to find out. That's been fun for us; conversations about Alex Rider. He's also dabbled with Famous Five and the adventures series for the same reasons. Strangely though, he's not so keen to read the Morpurgo books because his writing is based during the wars and he doesn't like suffering. When I asked why he chose these books to feature, he said that a lot of the other books he reads, his sister or brother would also choose. So these were the ones that were quintessentially him.

And then there's Jordan; the one who doesn't do toys anymore and lamented the fact that she didn't get enough books for Christmas and too many clothes.

Her reading repertoire is anything she gets her hands on. She loves her graphic novels and reads and re-reads them. She loves her Land of Stories fantasy genre books and the Morpugo books I got for Evan, she read them. I asked if she felt sad for the characters and her reply was that sometimes but they always learnt to live on (life lesson there). The book that recently got to her was Wonder about a kid her age having to go to school but having severe crano-facial deformities and how he struggled in school. 3/4 way through it, I found her reading Beezus and Ramona and she said she needed a break  to read something not so sad. She's since finished Wonder and has gone to immerse herself in some fantasy because I think the real world got too real for her. A friend of ours gave us Graveyard Book for the twins as a birth present. Literally, at birth. Coraline and Graveyard Book were their keepsakes and she recently finished Graveyard Book. We listened to it in the car too and I just want to say, Neil Gaiman's voice is a nice voice. The book though, is heartbreakingly sad but it did occur to me that all these things are sad because I'm an adult and I see it through the eyes of a mom or with the understanding of the suffering or pain. For them, for most part, it's just a story.

Tangentially, we're teaching the twins to take public transport. When the time comes for us to allow them onto public transport on their own, Packrat has decreed that Jordan shall not be allowed to bring a book. Because if she does, she might accidentally find herself in Pasir Ris because for her, the world does melt and disappear when she reads.

So there, the books that are currently inundating my house and surfacing in strange places like under my pillow and in my bathroom. I suspect I enable a lot of this too because I'm constantly adding books into my Amazon cart and similar to them being in the library, new books magically appear on the shelves.

I am, afterall, the Book Santa and the acquirer of books from the library.

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Dealing with loss- a 9 year old's perspective

JED lost their great granddad last week. The twins, in particular were close to him because they grew up living in the same house as he did. There's something to be said about living in a multi-generational house.

Anyway, he passed, at a ripe old age of 100. We knew it was soon because he wasn't doing so well and had done our best to prepare JED. Even then, when we found out that he had passed on, telling them was still going to be no easy feat. For good or for bad, Grandma broke the news to them before we managed to.

Jordan was inconsolable. Evan was very take charge. He took it upon himself to ring myself and Packrat to let us know. He also let us know that Jordan was distraught about it. Muffin was confused because he didn't have as many memories about Tai Gong as the twins did and he couldn't understand why he wasn't as upset as they were.

It took some time for us to talk Jordan through her despair. And what perhaps helped them all process it was for them to write cards to Tai Gong to place before the casket. We also got them to share their best memories of Tai Gong.

Jordan: Going into his room and taking his hymnal and singing with him.

Evan: Stealing butter cookies from his cookie tin (the traditional round tin of butter cookies)

Muffin: The stuffed tiger that taught him to roar loud.

Allowing them to talk about Tai Gong seemed to help. So did bringing them to the wake. When there weren't many people about in the afternoon, we brought them over and allowed them to say goodbye and place their flowers and cards.

We didn't stop them from crying. Some of the elders tried to console them by telling them not to cry since Tai Gong was in a better place and had gone to heaven but we told them they could cry and it was okay to be sad. Because we didn't hide how sad we were to have lost him, we told them they didn't have to either.

By the end of the funeral, everyone was emotionally spent but I think we were all calm and at peace with Tai Gong's passing. And while I thought we were done processing our grief, I found a letter Jordan had written to a friend, two days ago. The passing of a friend's cat had triggered reminders of all the deaths she's had to see through this year and that's when I realised that in their own little ways, they were still coming to terms with Tai Gong's passing.

He had no longer been part of our daily lives but I think he was always at the back our minds. And even though the twins had memories of him, it didn't seem enough to make up for the fact that he wasn't physically present anymore. So slowly, they have to work through it and as parents, we are just there to answer their many questions and hold them tight when it gets too much.

 But in the little things that they have said and done since Tai Gong's passing, they're also showing themselves to be little grown up beings in more ways than one. And I'm pretty sure, Tai Gong had a little bit to do with that too.

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The Tooth Fairy

Muffin is growing up fast. He's shot up so quickly in the last few months that he's become gangly and clumsy. He's also started losing his milk teeth.

The first tooth he lost was at the gym. He left it on the bench but he couldn't find it after.

Tonight, he dropped his second tooth. We have been telling him, the last few days, to not swallow his tooth so that we could stick it under his pillow like the Jordan and Evan did.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. The tooth found the most inopportune time to fall out; as Muffin was rinsing his mouth after brushing his teeth. So it swirled in the sink and went down the drain pipe before anyone could react.

Evan tried. He tried to cover the hole in the sink. But the tooth slipped right through his fingers.

Muffin howled. It wasn't one tooth he was mourning. It was two. And he cried so pitifully, his usually combative brother came running to get us.

No amount of carrying and consoling soothed his distress.

Right till Evan offered him one of his own milk teeth (that he knows I keep in a container), to lay under his pillow so that the tooth-fairy would come.

Even with that, it took him another 10 to 15 minutes of sobbing, gulping and hiccoughing before he picked a tooth, laid it in the box and slipped it under his pillow. And then he cried himself to sleep.

But at least there was recourse.

Evan, the brother who fights so bitterly with him sometimes, rose to the occasion, put aside his own grumpiness and showed kindness and compassion. He did ask me to return him his tooth once we were done with it. To which, I gladly acceded. After all, the tooth was his.

So not only did we leave a note and 2 $1 coins for Muffin, we told him in the note that his big brother helped to make it happen and that he had a wonderful big brother. So we were leaving an extra $1 that he was to give to his big brother for helping him feel better. 

Sometimes, we don't give Evan enough credit. He's the oft-misunderstood, bullied, overshadowed middle brother. But he always, always rises to the occasion when it matters the most.

Like tonight, where he saved the day and was the tooth fairy through and through.

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The last time the oven bell dinged.

- This is actually a post from 5 years, 11 months and 1 day ago-
This is how old Muffin is today and it's part of the reason why I have my baby craving. But just re-looking this post also made me feel exhausted just thinking about it so I'll settle for being nostalgic rather that do anything about it.

So anyway, here's my account of what happened exactly 5 years and 11 months ago. 

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For everyone who was checking in to see if Muffin finally decided to show up, the wait ended yesterday. At 39 weeks 6 days at 1426 hrs.

So, how did we finally evict him? Well, he actually evicted himself. Perhaps because he knew the weekend was coming up. Perhaps he finally got clued in to the fact that his watery home was getting a bit too snug for him. Whatever it is, he chose yesterday to make an appearance.

And we only realised it by chance.

Early Friday morning, I woke up to pee. Naturally, since Muffin was exerting a great amount of pressure on my bladder. When I climbed back into bed, I suddenly realised that the usually active Muffin was not moving at all. 30 minutes of prodding and shaking my belly didn't seem to do anything to rouse him, causing me to imagine his umbilical cord strangling him and other horrors that I'd heard about. Massively panicking, I shook Packrat awake so that he could join me in the panicking.

He being a guy, jumped into action, ordered me out of bed to change and get to the hospital. It was the only way to know for sure. By then, I'd already felt some twitches from Muffin but I'd awakened a sleeping dragon in Packrat who insisted he wasn't going to rest easy till we put on the trace and ascertained Muffin's well-being.

Muffin, being Muffin was fine. Thank God! But incidentally, the trace picked up the fact that I was having regular contractions every 10 minutes. Although the midwife and doctor (whom I felt extremely bad for, having been rudely awaken at 3 am to consult on my case) told us we could go home, Packrat asked the midwife to check if I were dilated. This was a bit of an issue with us because without dilation, Muffin was not going to be able to get out of me naturally. And up to that point, that had be not even a micro-milli-bit of dilation. Lo and behold, there was some dilation! Finally.

To us, that was a good thing and it was met with great relief as well as trepidation. It did mean that while the wait would finally be over, there really would be another child in the house to add to the frenzy of our household.

Despite being then counselled to stay on at the hospital, we decided to go home. For various reasons. One, we'd left suddenly in the middle of the night and our children would probably be distraught to wake up to find us NOT in our beds. Two, I'd heard from other mums that the worst place to labour was the hospital as it tended to either halt or retard labour.

In the ensuing hours, for the first time, the contractions got stronger and more intense rather than disappearing as they had tended to do in the past weeks. And because I was home, I basically had to distract myself from the mounting discomfort.

By the time Packrat came back to get me, it was painful enough for me to stop what I was doing. Thankfully, they only lasted about a minute or so and that was the only reason I got through them, knowing that they would only last a minute. Packrat needed lunch and half jokingly suggested we eat at the food court we stopped at. I suspect my 'evil' look is even more intense when I am in pain and that idea was not pursued seriously.

The staff in the labour ward were expecting me apparently, because when I showed up, they were like "Yes, you're Ondine. You're the one who requested to go home and you're the one who wants to be able to walk around". True, I had requested to be able to 'walk' my labour off and since the hospital only had one room with the wireless CTG machine, I had asked them to hold the room for me. And I guess they couldn't believe that I had opted to go home even when I was told NOT TO.

My hospital, unlike some others in Singapore is still a little bit conservative in its approach to delivery so there are no water tubs and birth stools. And I guess to them, I was somewhat of a maverick because I had requested to walk and more incredulous stares followed when I told them I didn't want an epidural and rejected all offers of gas. All I used was my sock of rice that we constantly asked the nurses to nuke in the microwave.

With my sock of rice, I walked, swayed and banged table tops my way through the contractions that were getting more intense as I dilated at warp speed. From the point of entry into hospital where I was dilated at 4 cm, it went to 6 cm in half an hour. By that point, I just wanted to lie down and rattle the rails of the bed as the contractions sent spasmodic pain down my back into my bum. My very cool Ob-gyn waltzed in and congratulated me for finally going into labour. He asked if I want him to break my water bag and I told him to give it a little bit more time since we weren't not in a hurry and Muffin seemed to be nonchalant about the fact that my every bit of my body was finally all working in cahoots to expel him from his watery hotel.

After he left, I decided for the last time to get up and try and walk around, somewhat still trying to justify to the nurses why I wanted the wireless CTG monitors on me. But when I did, I felt that I had actually sat on a huge water balloon that went "SQUISH" under me. Yes, the water bag that I'd told the doctor not to burst, burst quite dramatically on its own accord. Right onto my Mashi-Maru bedroom sleepers.

I'd read somewhere that bursting the waterbag was a "committment to labour" because it really would be the point of no return and it truly was. I shrieked in pain when the next contraction came. The water bag must have cushioned much of the intensity of it and since the bag had burst, I no longer had that buffer. At the same time, that elusive urge to 'bear down' was upon me and Packrat wasn't sure if I was conscious of the fact that I kept telling him that I needed to poop. Apparently, the sensations are identical.

The midwife chose that moment to plunge her fingers into me causing me to want to kick her in the face. Thankfully, the result also heralded the fact that it would be last time anyone unceremoniously did that to me. 10 cm and we were good to go. There was only one problem. The time that had lapsed between my Ob-gyn leaving and my severe need to take the biggest dump of my life was probably just enough time for him to have arrived at his clinic and start seeing patients again.

So despite the midwife telling me to push when I felt like it, I was screeching for the doctor and going mad with the idea that I had to bear with this pain because the doctor wasn't back yet. And it didn't occur to me to cross my legs either. When he finally returned, I was partially distracted by the fact that I was watching my doctor change out of his work shoes into the most unglamourous of yellow boots.

But that was where the real fun began.

He, in the calmest of voices, told me to push when I was ready. By that point, I was alternating between sobbing from the intensity of the discomfort and swearing like a banshee. Until I heard him very firmly tell me I was wasting my breath and should channel it toward pushing the baby out. He also warned me that I was going to feel some stinging because he remembered that not only was I anti-pain relief, I was anti-episiotomy and the only way around it was to administer a perineal massage to muscle that was already going to be stretched beyond belief.

My thoughts at that point I think bordered on "I don't care what is going on, I just want this extremely weird, burning sensation to STOP!" I'd clarify at this point that while it was painful in a way that being sliced is painful, there was the very real sensation of something very big and possibly alien like bursting forth from my very core. And despite that fact that I've run for so much of my life and pride myself in being physiologically aware of my body and its muscles, I really had no idea what I was doing or what muscles I needed to engage.

But since millions of women have go through it before me and have survived, I figured I would too. 3 pushes and his head was out. And these 3 pushes came almost one on top of another. Because of that, despite the fact that I wanted to be free from an episiotomy, the doctor had no choice but to do it. He said that Muffin was coming too fast for him to stretch the muscles out in time. Anyway, another half push and the shoulders were released and then another half push for the rest of him to come tumbling out.

The minute they put my steaming hot Muffin on me, I declared very loudly that I wasn't ever going to do this again. I think that broke the tension in the room quite a bit.

So that's how Muffin was born. Between my water bag bursting and him tumbling right out of me was the longest ten minutes of my life but in the grand scale of things, it was a mighty short labour and delivery.

Incidentally, Muffin's name is Dylan Josiah Tan.

And here are some souvenir shots from the birth that are totally inane.

My trusty heat sock.
    

 

The victim of my water bag bursting unexpectedly! My Mashi-Maru slippers. If you look very carefully, the right one, has a stain above the ear that Packrat, try as he may, could not get rid off.
















Presenting Baby Dylan, 30 minutes after delivery after his first feed.

















His very proud Big Sister who fawns over him like a doll. His Big brother however, is a bit worried about his position being usurped and is clinging on to Mommy for dear life.
















For all those totally freaked out by this post and are contemplating adoption and a hysterectomy, it really isn't as bad as I've made it out to be. It can't be all that bad since I really didn't have any drugs to do it. Maybe taking out the wisdom teeth are worse, since you can't do that without anaesthetic. So there, a means of comparison!

We followed up this blow by blow account with a spiritual perspective of the birth. So for those who want to read on, here it is.

This post is part of the ‘Birth Stories’ Blog Train hosted by Owls Well


If you would like to travel to the previous stops on this Blog Train and read more interesting birth stories, you can start with this one here with Prayerfull Mum, Danessa.

Danessa is a Stay-at-Home Mum to one precious princess. Read on to find out this mother's experience of giving birth that took place 5 years ago. Sometimes we got to be careful what we pray for ...

To read other exciting birth stories please click on the picture below.

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What a teacher truly wants on Teachers' Day...

I could go with a nice long holiday without any papers to grade but that would be wishful thinking. I've had lots of friends with school going kids ask me what it is that teachers truly like for Teachers' Day and what were some of the Teachers' Day gifts that I remember.

While I can't speak for other teachers, here are some of my favourites and the ones I remember fondly.

The funniest one, I cannot find a photograph for. It was back when mobile phones had no cameras and my darling class gave me 2 mango fruit which I ate! They had noticed that their teacher, i.e. me, never repeated her wardrobe which consisted mostly of Mango outfits. So come Teachers' Day, their corny 18 year old humour had them present me two HUGE mangoes. And to top it off, a T-shirt that I still have.

2. The most self-aware one was an urn that I still use. It came from a class I had to learn to love because they were really trying. They made me stage a walk out, a strike and eventually swear at them. I put small change in it now but for the years it sat on my desk in the office, it elicited chuckles from both staff and students alike.

The weirdest would be a toilet scrub brush with no message whatsoever. 18 year old humour, I did not and sometimes still don't get. 

The ones I found most useful. 

1. Honey- I always left them in school and I'd always use them up. Teaching for long stretches and a propensity to get laryngitis made it extremely useful. Honey and lemon drinks. No lemon, just hot water and honey.

2. Lozenges- I've come to appreciate all kinds. From the  Nim Jiom ones to the medicated or the honey eucalyptus ones for the aforementioned reason. I started keeping them in my pencil case and when I was really ill, I'd carry a pot of it around.

3. Red pens- I generally graded in red. Occasionally pink or purple if the mood hit me. And we used to lose our red pens all the time because we would take our papers out to grade every time we got a chance and we would leave our pens all over. Years after I stopped teaching in school, I opened a handbag I hadn't used in a while and found 2 red pens in there. But woe was the day that I had planned to go out to work, settled down nicely with a drink somewhere only to realise I had no pen! I have also on occasion graded with a coloured pencil and a crayon because I wasn't in proximity of a pen (of any colour). So we never ever had enough red pens and were always thankful for those.

And then there were the ones from students who knew me and understood that teachers were human and appreciated the same things they did.

So they've come bearing  cups of MacD's iced tea because they'd seen me come into class with it and we had chatted enough for them to know that I would mainline the stuff if I could. (This is no longer relevant as MacD's iced tea has changed to the run of the mill Heaven and Earth stuff that doesn't work.)

Others pooled together to buy a Starbucks card with enough credit for one drink so that I could grade their papers there (this after spotting me at a Starbucks grading away furiously). All much appreciated and remembered after all these years.

That's the advantage of teaching the older bunch; they remember funny things and have enough freedom to go out and get what they want for their teachers. 8 year old Jordan has, however, very observantly commented her form teacher loves Hello Kitty and that we should buy all her gym coaches bubble tea because they, like Mommy (*guilty here*), drink bubble tea all the time. (Since MacD's doesn't do it for me anymore!)

In a nutshell, the gifts that have meant most are the ones that are the personal ones, the notes, montages, cards or ones where there has been thought put into it. So if you're wondering what to help your kid get or make for their teachers, ask them about their teachers and what they know about them. 

 Disclaimer: Note that all opinions are mine and are not endorsed by schools of any kind!

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The bigger person

Today, I looked at Evan through new eyes.

We've always known that he's a gentle soul and recently, we were wondering if he was a little bit too gentle. He's at the age where the boys rough house a lot but he doesn't and stays away from those that do. He claims he doesn't like those who play rough and are aggressive.

But after today, I've decided I'm going to leave it because he's a better kid than that.

Scene:

A pair of girls teased him. He wasn't happy and came to tell me. I told him to ignore them. They continued to tease him. So he took a jar of fake insects and tossed them in the direction of the girls. One of the girls retaliated and hit him really hard. That was when we had to step in.

Girl's dad demands she apologises for what she did. Girl refuses. Girl's dad calls Evan over.

Evan goes over, reluctantly.

Girl's dad invites Evan to hit her back. As hard as he wants too, since she wouldn't apologise.

Evan shakes his head, whispers 'no need', holds his head up and walks away, despite repeated invitations to hit back.

Girl's dad points out to girl that was the right way to behave, that instead of escalating the situation, he turns his back to it. Girl hangs head in shame and cries.

She comes up later on and whispers an apology to Evan, by which time, Evan has forgotten and forgiven her.

- End of Scene-

So proud, my heart could sing.

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Mourning in private

It's been an emotionally exhausting week. Every where we turn, every time we're on any social media platform, we are inundated with the death of Lee Kuan Yew. I've read some, tried to ignore quite a lot and taken to heart quite a bit; his red box, his love for his wife, his house that looked suspiciously like my grandma's house a couple of blocks down from him and  despite how draconian his reputation was, he was also an empathetic man to those who needed his help.

A friend once wondered out loud why we mourned the deaths of people we don't really know. So the question of whether we were just caught up in the moment or felt true genuine grief was something I wrestled with.

I knew this day was coming. After all, we had all started to see how frail he had become. We all knew he was in intensive care. We all knew it was a matter of time. But even then, when we woke up to the news at the beginning of the week, for that moment, everything hung heavy in the air.

We didn't do a lot of what everyone did. We didn't go and join the queues at the Padang to pay our respects and we didn't get the car decals. I didn't change my picture on FB and I don't think I actually put up anything on FB this week.

But that didn't mean that we didn't think about it. That didn't mean we weren't in mourning. Much of our conversation revolved around the stuff we had read and our responses to it. Much of what we talked about to JED revolved around him as well.

Up to this point, he has been a very removed figure in their lives.

So I have tried my best to personalise him to them. I told them that Mama and Ah Gong (my parents) met him when they were students in England. I told them that when I was young, we would drive past his house at Oxley to get to my grandma's house and I would wave at the guards. I told them that Papa taught his grandsons. That has helped a little.

We took Muffin with us to watch the cortege travel from the Istana to Parliament House. He waited for an hour for the 30 second drive by. He wanted to see LKY and was upset that he only saw the box. For the rest of the day, he whined that he didn't see "Lee Tan Yew" (That's how he refers to LKY)

And as the gun carriage passed us by, we were struck by how the casket seemed too small to contain so great a man.

I'm not entirely sure how much of it he actually understood but he was able to tell the teachers where he had been and came home reporting that if we visited Lee Kuan Yew again, we had to bow. He has also woken up over the week asking for "Lee Tan Yew" so we know he's been on Muffin's mind.

The twins' learning curve has been steep; at school, they've been inundated with "Just In Time" lessons about this relative stranger. But they are at the age that they take it all in, seriously with absolutely no sense of cynicism. So, they've come home asking to go to his funeral (nope, we're not important enough to be invited), Parliament House (nope, the queues are too long and they've stopped letting people in) and the Istana (once again, nope, you're not important enough so the guards won't let you in.) Jordan has asked repeatedly for a history book. Not only does she want to read about LKY, she wants to read about other people in Singapore and about old Singapore. I have resolved to get her a secondary school history text book.

But because of that, we have wanted to give them some sort of closure. They've been displaying some distress at LKY's death though they have been unable to articulate why. It's pretty much their first exposure to death of someone albeit not close but nonetheless impactful to them. And because we weren't able to take them to Parliament House, this morning, we trouped the whole brood down to pay tribute at the Istana.

Each made a card and I brought it along with a stick of glue. Of course, when we got there and they saw the available cards, they wrote a couple more.

That helped them, especially Jordan who took the time to read the cards of others and admired the photo collages and drawings that people had left behind.  They asked us questions- why there was a drawing of LKY crying, what people from other countries were thanking him, why people left candles and flowers and gifts. They had to get it out of their system. This afternoon, they all seemed a little bit more settled.

As for us, the adults who were children when he was Prime Minister and became critical young adults as he stepped down from office, it's been a surreal week trying to reconcile our intellectual criticisms of him with the emotional reaction of seeing the Great Man of our childhood pass on. Yes, Singapore has lost a great someone, our own national myth. And no, there won't be anyone to fill those britches or that seat in Parliament. But at the same time, the distress I feel is more personal. This great man of god-like proportions was also a father and grandfather but his family has had to put their loss on the back burner as they conducted dignitaries through to pay their last respects. I know that if it were my own father, in a coffin, all I'd want to do is to cry for him, mourn his passing and keep his memory alive by talking about him to others. Feeling that, I ache for his family who are unable to go up to the coffin and touch it and talk to their dad or grand dad because there are millions of others waiting to walk by.

So our thoughts of condolences both wax lyrical about what he has done for Singapore as well as thanking his family for sharing their dad/grand dad with the rest of the world. As I go to bed tonight, as Singapore prepares for the funeral tomorrow, I feel very moved to pray. Not just to pray for the nation and the soul of the man who has passed but for the family that must now live without him.

And that pretty much sums it up.

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Pack ratting

My husband's online moniker is Packrat. A pack rat is someone who keeps everything and throws nothing. In this age of trying to have live with less and to simplify our lives, pack-ratting is non kosher. I'm the one who goes into these decluttering frenzies where things are mercilessly thrown out. Jordan remembers how I packed off one of her fairy books (That wasn't because I wanted to declutter, but because I didn't want her reading the fairy books). Evan reminisces about the kiddie bed that he had and we gave away. Muffin fears it when I brandish the bin at his toys that are carelessly strewn across the floor. They all know that when Mommy threatens to throw stuff out, she means it.

But recently, I've been thwarted. My mother's to blame. She's been clearing things out and asking if I wanted them. And that's how I fell off the wagon. The things that she was asking me if I wanted were old stuff. When my dad saw them, he scoffed at them and asked why my mom was trying to unload 'old junk' onto me.

The thing is I wanted all of 'old junk'. All of it.

To me, none of it was junk. All of it was tied to a one childhood memory or other and it's a sign of age that they mean something to me.

I ended up home with a set of fish knives and butter knives made from ivory - I am sorry, elephants who died for them!- (even though we eat fish with our fingers and I abhor the taste of butter) and 2 painted food carriers.

Why?

Because I used to use the butter knives when I was young, for everything (except butter); Spreading Nutella, peanut butter, kaya and jam on bread, slicing and skinning fruit (unsuccessfully) and cutting up loads of play dough, they are intricately linked to my childhood.

Because I grew up seeing the food carriers in my grandma's house. My grandma's house holds a very dear place in the hearts of all the cousins of my generation. We all, at some point or other lived in the house and I grew up first, visiting it and later on living in it. The food carriers, when I first saw them,  were actually used to carry food; rice at the bottom, vegetables and meats on top. As I got older, they were behind the glass doors, on display where I could look at the floral design in detail and muse at how beautiful they were. That was until my grandma passed on and we sold the place. And that's when they went to my mom. 

So to hear that they might be thrown out, despite my lack of space and despite my house already looking like a child care centre from all the toys all over the place, I had to take them.

I really didn't need to think twice.

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Grandpa's 70th: The undelivered speech

A part of Grandpa's dinner celebration involved speeches honouring Grandpa. The plan was for Packrat and his brother to say something followed by Grandpa's best friend saying something and then, us the daughters-in-law saying something. It was going to be a night of speeches and with a bunch of young kids running around, we decided on a truncated version of the list of speeches. Inevitably, the daughters-in-law round was the round to get cut.

But Grandpa still wanted to hear what we had to say and it seemed like an apt way to round off the my entire series for Grandpa's 70th.

What we were going to do was to tell those gathered some things that they didn't already know about Grandpa.

And this was what Jordan and I came up with.

1. Dad always wanted a daughter but we think he got more than he bargained for with his wife, two chattering daughters-in-law and three non-stop nattering grand daughters who occasionally rise to decibels that only dogs can hear. We all love him very much but we sometimes wonder if he misses the quiet.

2. Dad loves and cherishes making memories. He isn't big on treating himself to big luxury items but has brought us all on holidays and never says no when we ask him to come on holiday with us. JED will grow up remembering both grandparents in all their early holidays. They do not stop talking about the holidays they have gone on, with their grandparents. In fact, when we travel without Grandpa and Grandma, JED ask where they are. 

3. Dad is a great cook and loves cooking for those he loves. We all look forward to Sunday lunches because it's always a feast. When we were in Hawaii last year with them, Muffin went through a phase where he only ate fried rice and it HAD to be "Ah Gong's" fried rice. Grandpa's dream is for his grandchildren to ring him over the week to let him know what they want for Sunday lunch. God bless him and Grandma when all 5 children each demand something radically different!

4. Dad's been a great influence on our children. We have two 7 year olds who are as excited to watch BBC's Blue Planet as they are to watch Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo. And our 4 year old went through a time where he only sang the Prologue from Les Miserables. Only Grandpa and Grandma understood why Muffin would spontaneously bellow '24601!'. (It's a Les Miserables thing)

5.This is from Jordan so it's Grandpa rather than Dad. Grandpa dreamt of being a hairdresser. How do I know this? He always has a comb in his back pocket. And when my hair is messy, he takes it out and combs my hair beautifully.

So there, the bits that were going to make up my speech to honour my 70 year old father-in-law, father to Packrat and Ah Gong to JED.

To many more years of love, laughter and long vacations!

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Cruising; JED's preferred means of vacation

The one thing about taking 3 kids on vacation is the exhaustion that comes from it. It's 24-7 of their shenanigans and often the only way to survive it is to only keep the rules that matter (do not climb the railings of a 16 storey ship) and chuck out the rest (hash brown and french fries at every meal).

But what eventually makes it worth while is how happy and thrilled they are by the experience and how much fun they had.

And if we left it up to JED, every single vacation would be on an ocean liner.

We just got back from a 5 day cruise. We've been back 4 days and they haven't stopped talking about it. Even before they got off the ship, they were talking about going on another one (to which, we asked the perennial rhetorical question of "DO YOU THINK WE PRINT MONEY?").

To the uninitiated, a cruise vacation is for the retired folk and there really isn't much to do on board. And to a certain extent, it is true. JED had their grandparents, 4 grand aunts, 3 grand uncles on the ship with them together with their cousins.

But their unadulterated glee came from the fact that there was always something to do at close proximity. It really was a matter of either choosing to do nothing (sit by the pool) or do everything (ice skate, rock climb and play golf) all in a day.

 

 

Food was never a problem. And the cruise liner we were on, did this magical thing where they made french fries taste even yummier. So, french fries and hash browns at every meal, spaghetti from willing waiters at every beck and call and ice cream and hot dogs on tap at the pool deck.



Obviously, their favourite activity was to hit the pools. Packrat would find a spot in the hot tub and camp out there to keep an eye on them (an attack of hives kept me out of the pool) and the kids would alternate between the hot tub and the freezing salt water pools till they shrivelled up like prunes or got hungry which ever happened first. They never tired of it. They swam after breakfast, after lunch, after dinner and would have gone first thing in the morning had we allowed them to.





Mayhaps it was just a JED thing but at every port of call, there were always loud protests about getting off the ship. Muffin physically panicked as we were on a tender leaving the ship for Phuket. He thought we were leaving the ship with his precious toys still on board. And even though they had fun filling their pockets with beach-fuls of sand, they could never wait to get back aboard the ship. By then, we were usually so tired of their belly-aching that we were also thankful to be back aboard the ship.

Reluctantly enjoying being on land in Penang

The lack of swim gear did not stop him from hitting the Phuket beaches and bringing aboard pocketfuls of sand. 

But it wasn't just JED who were reluctant to get off the ship when the ship docked back in Singapore. We were too. Perhaps it was the service; being well taken care of and the kids always happy with their meals. It might also have been the formal setting at dinner that made us feel that at least there were some moments that we could dress up and be adults rather than just parents; or the fact that the ship never sleeps and JED were always so knackered at the end of the day that we had time to take walks on the deck, go to supper or hold hands and explore the ship. 

Whatever it was, we are all a little bit wistful to be back on land and Evan has been hard at work campaigning that our next vacation be on an even larger ocean liner. 

But meanwhile, there's much de-toxing to be done and Christmas to look forward to. 

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Coming into their own- Jordan

Evan's character building moment for the year was having gone away to camp with Packrat. Jordan's came in the form of the inter-club gymnastic competition that she chose to take part in. She wanted to take part in it because she wanted to win some medals.

A week before the meet, she realises that taking part wasn't really going to be enough to win the medals, she actually had to do well enough to get placed.

On her own accord, she ramped up her training sessions. The two weeks before the meet saw her practically live at the gym, going every other day and towards the end. every day. 3 days before the meet, she had a freak out melt down about not being able to turn herself on the uneven bars. She was convinced that if she didn't, she would not win. It took us an hour to talk her down from that.

But whatever she put herself through, it paid off. Her coaches told us about the focus and glint in her eye when she was on the floor and even though she didn't get a gold medal for any of the events, she was placed in every single event and managed to come in 2nd overall.

 

Going through the motions

My mother tells me that when I was eleven, something clicked in my head and I realised that if I put in effort into my work, it would pay off. She tells me that it was the same year that I entered and won my first competitive sporting event; I took part in a swim meet and won in the events that I swam in. She thinks that it made me realise that there was a correlation between working hard and succeeding. 

I think Jordan's figured that out. 4 years before I did. 

So pleased, she is. 

The challenge for us is to manage her. Well, me specifically. Packrat says that Jordan is a clone of me. That perfectionist, high strung, achievement oriented and competitive streak got passed down to her by the buckets. And through this entire experience, we learnt that

1. Like me, she drives herself into a frenzy because of her own extremely high expectations. Hence, the melt down. Thankfully, I've gone through enough of them in my life time to know that the melt down is necessary as an outlet for the build up of stress. And after that, it'll be okay. But at 7, she needs someone around to talk her down from it.

2. Remind her that no matter how high the stakes are, she has to have fun and enjoy doing it. Before her rotations began, I took her aside and we prayed and then I told her that the most important thing was to enjoy herself out there. And if she could do that, the medals would be easier to come by. So when she ended up every routine with a face splitting grin, I knew that regardless the previous freak outs, she was doing okay.

3. We cannot belittle her expectations. Telling her that it's okay if she doesn't win might be our way of telling her we won't be angry or upset with her if she doesn't win. To us, it's a good thing. But to her, telling her it's okay that she doesn't win when she badly wants to, it is that we aren't supportive of goals and we don't think highly of it.

4. We have to teach her to take instruction. Jordan's got an athlete's personality. Their perception of their abilities is sometimes over inflated, especially when they think they've already got it. Jordan's a little bit like that. She knows she's good but because of that, she thinks she no longer needs to listen. This is something that extends into her academic work as well.

5. We have to teach her about failure. As far as possible, I don't ever want her to fear failure. Inevitably, she will. It is one of the pillars of why Singapore is so successful. But I also know this fear is crippling and is what kept me from achieving greater athletic success. So I sit with her and talk to her about how falling off the beam isn't because she is lousy at it but because she didn't hold in her muscles enough to stay up; that her slightly weaker placings on the floor and the vault weren't condemning her but where she had to listen to her coaches more about how to make it better.


But none of them really take anything away from her victory of last weekend. She deserved every medal she got. We told her how proud  we were of how hard she worked and what she achieved because of it. It's a mouthful of praise but worth a lot more to her than telling her how good she was.

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The oven bell finally dinged

- This is a post from 5 years, 11 months and 1 day ago-
This is how old Muffin is today and it's part of the reason why I have my baby craving. But just re-looking this post also made me feel exhausted just thinking about it so I'll settle for being nostalgic rather that do anything about it.

So anyway, here's my account of what happened exactly 5 years and 11 months ago. 

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For everyone who was checking in to see if Muffin finally decided to show up, the wait ended yesterday. At 39 weeks 6 days at 1426 hrs.

So, how did we finally evict him? Well, he actually evicted himself. Perhaps because he knew the weekend was coming up. Perhaps he finally got clued in to the fact that his watery home was getting a bit too snug for him. Whatever it is, he chose yesterday to make an appearance.

And we only realised it by chance.

Early Friday morning, I woke up to pee. Naturally, since Muffin was exerting a great amount of pressure on my bladder. When I climbed back into bed, I suddenly realised that the usually active Muffin was not moving at all. 30 minutes of prodding and shaking my belly didn't seem to do anything to rouse him, causing me to imagine his umbilical cord strangling him and other horrors that I'd heard about. Massively panicking, I shook Packrat awake so that he could join me in the panicking.

He being a guy, jumped into action, ordered me out of bed to change and get to the hospital. It was the only way to know for sure. By then, I'd already felt some twitches from Muffin but I'd awakened a sleeping dragon in Packrat who insisted he wasn't going to rest easy till we put on the trace and ascertained Muffin's well-being.

Muffin, being Muffin was fine. Thank God! But incidentally, the trace picked up the fact that I was having regular contractions every 10 minutes. Although the midwife and doctor (whom I felt extremely bad for, having been rudely awaken at 3 am to consult on my case) told us we could go home, Packrat asked the midwife to check if I were dilated. This was a bit of an issue with us because without dilation, Muffin was not going to be able to get out of me naturally. And up to that point, that had be not even a micro-milli-bit of dilation. Lo and behold, there was some dilation! Finally.

To us, that was a good thing and it was met with great relief as well as trepidation. It did mean that while the wait would finally be over, there really would be another child in the house to add to the frenzy of our household.

Despite being then counselled to stay on at the hospital, we decided to go home. For various reasons. One, we'd left suddenly in the middle of the night and our children would probably be distraught to wake up to find us NOT in our beds. Two, I'd heard from other mums that the worst place to labour was the hospital as it tended to either halt or retard labour.

In the ensuing hours, for the first time, the contractions got stronger and more intense rather than disappearing as they had tended to do in the past weeks. And because I was home, I basically had to distract myself from the mounting discomfort.

By the time Packrat came back to get me, it was painful enough for me to stop what I was doing. Thankfully, they only lasted about a minute or so and that was the only reason I got through them, knowing that they would only last a minute. Packrat needed lunch and half jokingly suggested we eat at the food court we stopped at. I suspect my 'evil' look is even more intense when I am in pain and that idea was not pursued seriously.

The staff in the labour ward were expecting me apparently, because when I showed up, they were like "Yes, you're Ondine. You're the one who requested to go home and you're the one who wants to be able to walk around". True, I had requested to be able to 'walk' my labour off and since the hospital only had one room with the wireless CTG machine, I had asked them to hold the room for me. And I guess they couldn't believe that I had opted to go home even when I was told NOT TO.

My hospital, unlike some others in Singapore is still a little bit conservative in its approach to delivery so there are no water tubs and birth stools. And I guess to them, I was somewhat of a maverick because I had requested to walk and more incredulous stares followed when I told them I didn't want an epidural and rejected all offers of gas. All I used was my sock of rice that we constantly asked the nurses to nuke in the microwave.

With my sock of rice, I walked, swayed and banged table tops my way through the contractions that were getting more intense as I dilated at warp speed. From the point of entry into hospital where I was dilated at 4 cm, it went to 6 cm in half an hour. By that point, I just wanted to lie down and rattle the rails of the bed as the contractions sent spasmodic pain down my back into my bum. My very cool Ob-gyn waltzed in and congratulated me for finally going into labour. He asked if I want him to break my water bag and I told him to give it a little bit more time since we weren't not in a hurry and Muffin seemed to be nonchalant about the fact that my every bit of my body was finally all working in cahoots to expel him from his watery hotel.

After he left, I decided for the last time to get up and try and walk around, somewhat still trying to justify to the nurses why I wanted the wireless CTG monitors on me. But when I did, I felt that I had actually sat on a huge water balloon that went "SQUISH" under me. Yes, the water bag that I'd told the doctor not to burst, burst quite dramatically on its own accord. Right onto my Mashi-Maru bedroom sleepers.

I'd read somewhere that bursting the waterbag was a "committment to labour" because it really would be the point of no return and it truly was. I shrieked in pain when the next contraction came. The water bag must have cushioned much of the intensity of it and since the bag had burst, I no longer had that buffer. At the same time, that elusive urge to 'bear down' was upon me and Packrat wasn't sure if I was conscious of the fact that I kept telling him that I needed to poop. Apparently, the sensations are identical.

The midwife chose that moment to plunge her fingers into me causing me to want to kick her in the face. Thankfully, the result also heralded the fact that it would be last time anyone unceremoniously did that to me. 10 cm and we were good to go. There was only one problem. The time that had lapsed between my Ob-gyn leaving and my severe need to take the biggest dump of my life was probably just enough time for him to have arrived at his clinic and start seeing patients again.

So despite the midwife telling me to push when I felt like it, I was screeching for the doctor and going mad with the idea that I had to bear with this pain because the doctor wasn't back yet. And it didn't occur to me to cross my legs either. When he finally returned, I was partially distracted by the fact that I was watching my doctor change out of his work shoes into the most unglamourous of yellow boots.

But that was where the real fun began.

He, in the calmest of voices, told me to push when I was ready. By that point, I was alternating between sobbing from the intensity of the discomfort and swearing like a banshee. Until I heard him very firmly tell me I was wasting my breath and should channel it toward pushing the baby out. He also warned me that I was going to feel some stinging because he remembered that not only was I anti-pain relief, I was anti-episiotomy and the only way around it was to administer a perineal massage to muscle that was already going to be stretched beyond belief.

My thoughts at that point I think bordered on "I don't care what is going on, I just want this extremely weird, burning sensation to STOP!" I'd clarify at this point that while it was painful in a way that being sliced is painful, there was the very real sensation of something very big and possibly alien like bursting forth from my very core. And despite that fact that I've run for so much of my life and pride myself in being physiologically aware of my body and its muscles, I really had no idea what I was doing or what muscles I needed to engage.

But since millions of women have go through it before me and have survived, I figured I would too. 3 pushes and his head was out. And these 3 pushes came almost one on top of another. Because of that, despite the fact that I wanted to be free from an episiotomy, the doctor had no choice but to do it. He said that Muffin was coming too fast for him to stretch the muscles out in time. Anyway, another half push and the shoulders were released and then another half push for the rest of him to come tumbling out.

The minute they put my steaming hot Muffin on me, I declared very loudly that I wasn't ever going to do this again. I think that broke the tension in the room quite a bit.

So that's how Muffin was born. Between my water bag bursting and him tumbling right out of me was the longest ten minutes of my life but in the grand scale of things, it was a mighty short labour and delivery.

Incidentally, Muffin's name is Dylan Josiah Tan.

And here are some souvenir shots from the birth that are totally inane.

My trusty heat sock.
    

 

The victim of my water bag bursting unexpectedly! My Mashi-Maru slippers. If you look very carefully, the right one, has a stain above the ear that Packrat, try as he may, could not get rid off.
















Presenting Baby Dylan, 30 minutes after delivery after his first feed.

















His very proud Big Sister who fawns over him like a doll. His Big brother however, is a bit worried about his position being usurped and is clinging on to Mommy for dear life.
















For all those totally freaked out by this post and are contemplating adoption and a hysterectomy, it really isn't as bad as I've made it out to be. It can't be all that bad since I really didn't have any drugs to do it. Maybe taking out the wisdom teeth are worse, since you can't do that without anaesthetic. So there, a means of comparison!

We followed up this blow by blow account with a spiritual perspective of the birth. So for those who want to read on, here it is.

This post is part of the ‘Birth Stories’ Blog Train hosted by Owls Well

To read other exciting birth stories please click on the picture below.

If you would like to travel to the previous stops on this Blog Train and read more interesting birth stories, you can start with this one here (add hyperlink to previous blogger's post) by (Name of Blogger) over at (BlogURL/Blog Title with Hyperlink). Add in a brief intro of the blogger with a thumbnail picture of the blogger.

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