The club

The twins have two neighbours whom they have literally grown up with. One is a year older and the other was in their kindy class and now is in the same school as Jordan. Sufficed to say, they are thick as thieves and are often up to no good. They also treat each others' home as their own and one has even stayed over even though her house is a corridor and a lift ride away.

Their new thing is the night walk. On Fridays, we bundle them all up into the car and set them free somewhere they can use their torches and come up with stories to scare each other with. Last time round it was a nearby park connector and last night, it was the Botanic Gardens.

What amuses us is how their play and interaction with each other has changed, Muffin included. Where it was once parallel play, their play is fully interactive, imaginary and plot based. And during last night's walk, the older four have decided that they all belonged to a club and part of what they did was to find 'suspicious' things during night walks.

When I overheard the hushed discussions about the club, the thought in my head was 'how they have grown up.' Some of my favourite books growing up were about children who had secret clubs with club houses and passwords. And now, the twins were old enough to form their own.

They haven't figured out the manifesto of the club but it does have a name; the Neighbour Adventurers. They have however decided that there shall be a club house, there will be a password and the club house will be a tent or made out of boxes. In the clubhouse, there will be games like Uno, chess, checkers and there will be tables and chairs. But that's about it. Whether they are going to solve mysteries or go on adventures or basically just be busy-bodies, we don't know yet.


Time to start them on Secret Seven, Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers among other books.

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Surprising Us

The twins have such a busy week in school that we generally try not to do very much on the weekend. It's time for them to wind down, chill and do what they want. It is also the much awaited TV time though thankfully, they do choose to do other things apart from sitting in front of the TV. And with this free time, they roam the house and discover things that they get into and occasionally, it is so out of left field, it surprises us.

Jordan
We found Jordan stretched out on our bed reading to herself with a note pad beside her. The words that she could not read, meaning she could not pronounce went on the list.  So words like Maurice (from Beauty and the Beast) and candelabra appeared on the list. It's one step away from reading with a dictionary which I think we all did at one point or the other. But unlike me, she's doing it without any sort of prompting.

Evan
One of Evan's favourite foods is spaghetti. In fact, anything with meat sauce and carbs. So, spaghetti, shepherd's pie or hash browns with meat sauce and cheese to top it off. Because he asks for it so often and frankly, everyone is tired of cooking it for him, Packrat asked half jokingly if he wanted to learn how to cook it, himself. Surprisingly, he said yes. He gave up precious TV time (while it was on instead of it misbehaving or something) to learn from his dad. And now, he knows the order in which the ingredients go in. He just needs to do it again to get used to the heat over the stove.

Muffin
For some strange reason, Muffin loves the music from Les Miserables. We thought it was because he was bored in his grandparents' car (that was where the CDs were) that caused him to hum along to the songs. But when Packrat put on the 10th anniversary concert, he was riveted and refused to have the channel changed, despite repeated pleas from his bored siblings.

Thanks to these little discoveries that kept them busy, I managed to take a glorious two hour nap, only waking up to the credits of Star Wars blaring and Jordan blaring on top of it that she did.not.want.to.watch.Star.Wars. That was the end of (what is in my book) the long peace. But it was good while it lasted.

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Capturing Wonderment

When I was on vacation with my mom and my brother, we inadvertently started talking about our childhood memories. What struck me was that the memories that we had were mostly about things that weren't really meaningful to anyone else but us.

Anyway, since this blog is primarily for JED (for me too because my memory sucks), I'm going to endeavour to do a series of snapshots capturing some of the things that they might like to have memories and even photographs of.

Starting with things that made them go "WOW" in a hushed tone and be silent throughout the entire experience.

That was Muffin's reaction when we took him to an open field near where I work. Every evening and more so on Saturday mornings, there are these guys flying remote control planes. These planes were slightly under 3 feet long. The guys obviously had some part in building them, they tinker with them and the look on their faces when they manoeuvre the planes up into the sky is the same, unabashed look of wonderment that Muffin had on his face. They flew them as if the planes were part of the Red Arrows, flying inverted, doing barrel turns and twists in the air with shouts and whoops of glee.

Muffin was quiet and his face upturned the whole time. He asked no questions. He just watched. And slowly edged closer and closer to the nearest one of the guys tinkering with his plane. He didn't want to go. And when we did, he asked if he could bring Evan and Jordan back to see the planes. 

An old guy quipped to another as we were about to leave, 'Fly the plane low. Then you can see the beauty of it and enjoy it. Don't fly it too high, otherwise you might as well watch planes take off from Changi.'

Point taken.
Sense of wonderment? Check.

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Painting, mosquitoes and an unexpected conversation

A grocery run led me across the road where I saw a marquee set up and long tables where people seemed to be painting. On closer inspection, it was a community event set up by the constituency- the all powerful one; Tanjong Pagar and there was indeed painting- communal batik painting. On the other side, there was a display of mosquitoes to raise dengue awareness and balloon sculpting.

Something for each of the kids.

I high tail home to get the kids to return with all three and Packrat in tow.

As expected, Evan was fascinated with the mosquitoes; them at different stages of their life cycle- larvae, pupae and the adult ones malevolently flying about in a contained box. No photos because Evan was both fascinated and freaked out by the them and gripped on to my arms for dear life.

Both of them loved the batik painting. If I hadn't been holding the container of dye, I would have done some too. I suspect it will become a mural of sorts somewhere.

Muffin didn't do any of that but loved the balloon swords they were giving out and duelled with anyone willing to give him time of day.

They marched home with the 'swords' held high, patriotically coloured in national colours resembling a shaggy rag tag contingent for National Day.

Because it was a community event, the MPs for the constituency were in attendance. I point out to the twins one of the constituency's MPs Indranee Rajah and tell them that she helped saved their school.

Jordan walks up to her, stands by her side politely and waits while the she finishes off her conversation with someone else. The MP notices Jordan and Jordan mouthing something to her in all the noise. She bends over and Jordan says to her "I am Jordan. I am from St James Kindergarten. Thank you for saving my school." 

I can't get out of Jordan what Indranee Rajah's response was. Every time we try to ask her, she tells us what she said and smiles. But the MP did break out into a big smile and looked up at me to ask if Jordan is my daughter. I reply in the affirmative and she asks where we live; that to me is a strange question. But she does comment how nice it is that a little girl came up to her and spoke to her and how interesting that she and Evan (who had by then torn himself away from his beloved mosquitoes and appeared by my side) were twins.

Packrat's only comment on seeing a photographer take a photo of the exchange; that it doesn't appear in the press because Jordan looks like a little street urchin with wet hair, an old t-shirt and shorts paired off with wellies. Unless the press wants to try to make scruffy chic.

All this for the want of some painting and some mosquitoes.

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Not the Sabbath

In Judeo-Christian tradition, the Sabbath is supposed to be from sun down on Friday till Saturday evening. Others look at it as the entire weekend and it is supposed to be a time of rest. Or a time away from work. I usually work on the Sabbath; both Saturday and Sunday. But since I just finished a ridiculously long week, I decided to spend the entire day with them.

This might be stating the obvious but my conclusion is that spending time with JED violates the rule of Sabbath being a rest day. There is no rest to be had.

Our Saturday consisted of going to their school carnival in the morning. The thing with their school is, they do a really good job priming the kids for it. They do a great job working them up into an excited ball of frenzy. So, for the last two weeks, they came home every day, asking to go to the carnival, to play games and win prizes.

As a rule, we avoid crowds. And their school maxed out, is about 1000 students; on top of that, parents plus alumni was the pure definition of crowds. But we went because the twins would have it no other way. And because for the twins, it will be their last year. The kids spent all their time bouncing in the castles, playing games, craft work and then back to playing the games again. They went away thrilled, sweaty, hyped up and hungry.



The simplest thing to do on a weekend afternoon is to stick them in front of the television especially when it is swelteringly hot outside. But Muffin's latest craze is the duck pond at Botanic Gardens and when they ask to be outside, we make it a point not to say no. So armed with bottles of iced water, conveniently packed into a JED Packs thermal bag to keep iced cold and bicycles, we took JED to the park where they chased birds (Muffin), hunted for jackfruit (Evan) and whizzing down slopes (Jordan).  

They only agreed to go home when the racing down slopes ended up with Evan turning a little too quickly and sharply, somersaulting off the bicycle through the air and landed on the grass in tears from the shock. Our reaction after assessing that he was just crying from fright was Thank God Grandma wasn't around to see the big bruise developing on his chest where he met the handlebar on the way down to the grass!

A day like this usually guarantees a really quick bedtime and we got our wish. We were supposed to go out to dinner after JED fell asleep. But we were an hour late because we didn't count on falling asleep too when they did.

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