My Maternal Grandmother

My brother has been working on our family tree for several years now. Over the Chinese New Year period, he took the time to scan a lot of the old photos that were still around. My favorites were the ones of my grandmother. Here are just a few.

She always wore either the traditional samfu (literally translated to shirt and pants, but the chinese style) or the kebaya (embroidered blouse worn with a sarong) for more formal occasions. She always has her hair permed because her best friend was a hair dresser. I even saw photos of my uncle when he was three years old and he to had a perm! My grandmother still has permed hair today.

I'll admit that she's my favourite grandparent. She is always gentle, kind and considerate. In her old age, she has grown a little clumsier and less elegant if a stranger were to observer her but I still see her the way I did as a child. This photo of my grandparents from my childhood. She is still wearing a samfu.

And here they are today - she is 89 and he is 94. She no longer wears the samfu as often because they've all be worn out and nobody makes them anymore these days.

I think they both still look good for their age. Well, I'm off to give them a phonecall.

Stress Free Parenting

Is it possible? Somebody please tell me. Has anyone gone through an entirely frustration free day where each road block from a child was met with a smile and a calm voice?

Seriously, some days, when I just can't keep it calm at home and everything is crazy, I literally feel big wrinkles digging their way into my face and grey hairs pushing their way out from my hair follicles. I've taken to telling myself "Its no big deal, other kids get like this too. No point growing old over it."

As you can see, I'm still hungover from the holidays where I didn't have Richard's help with child care each day. I feel very disorganised and tense. Its impossible not to notice the calm mothers at Aaron's class gate during pick up and drop offs. They seem so peaceful and their children so obedient. Are they really like that all day? On the other hand, I have to admit that there are the mothers with the permanent furrows on their foreheads and kids that are definitely not cooperative. Thankfully, I think I'm somewhere in the middle, but I can feel a definite force pushing me to the dark side.

I want to be one of the calm ones. If only I could follow them around for a day to see if they just pull it together for the pick up and drop offs or they manage to keep their cool all 24 hours of the day. I suspect that it probably isn't calm all the time but maybe they do have most of their day under control.

The one common thing that I've noticed is that they never seem to be in a rush. Kids are unloaded and loaded into car seats at a very easy going pace. The long walk from the car park to the classroom is more like a stroll through park lands, observing and exploring along the way. The pick up after school often begins with a short chat about the day, sometimes a few minutes in the playground and then the stroll back to the car.

So, this is the first step that I will be taking in an attempt to reduce the spikes in stress levels in this house. I have no boss and I don't have heavily scheduled children so I'm just going to take it easy. Before jumping into this, I've started telling myself that it may mean that I must not rush to get things done so that I can have a few minutes to myself. The reward of a calmer environment and more co-operative children may eliminate that need for time to myself. Right?

Where did my weekend go?

I really think that weekends should be three days long - one day to do all the essentials, one day to go out and have fun and then one day to stay at home and do nothing. That one day of doing nothing would surely make the first weekday more attractive. 

Today disappeared in a flash. We went to mass in the morning, came home and I prepared some food that we could just re-heat during the week. Then, it was time for lunch. After that, I had to get everything ready for our usual Sunday journey to Caboolture for clogging. The entire family goes. Richard is now in the beginner class so the boys and I go along with him at around 4pm. My parents leave the house a little later than us. After Richard's session, he brings the boys home for dinner and bed while my parents and I stay back for the rest of the night of clogging. We don't get home until 10.30pm! 

So its just going to be short post tonight. I was supposed to start my early morning gym visits again tomorrow but I doubt I'll wake up. Is it that important to be disciplined? I'm still craving a break but for now, I'll settle for a good 6 hours of sleep.

Stuttering Episodes

During the first half of my pregnancy with Adrian, he had me very worried because one of the pre-natal tests came back indicating that he was at an increased risk of Down Syndrome. It was the first time in my life that I was constantly worrying about something day and night, for weeks! Anyway, all that worry was relieved after week 20 of the pregnancy when I had another scan.

About three weeks ago, he did it to me again - gave me a day and night type of worry. He has been speaking very well and chats like some three year olds. His sentences are long and mostly complete ones with correct grammar. So, it came as a real shock when he started stuttering. I don't know what the trigger was the first time, but one night, he started repeating the word 'I'. He always says 'I love you' about a hundred times before he goes to sleep but that night, he repeated the 'I' five times each time he said it.

By the next morning, he was repeating the first word of every sentence he spoke. And by that evening, when he was tired, he had to work so hard to get the first word out that he would start crying. It was heart wrenching to watch.

All this happened during the Chinese New Year period when we were very busy and there were a lot of people around. When we finally managed to have a quiet day at home, and I could dedicate all my attention to him, he seemed to improve. Instead of repeating a word, he would just drag it into a long sound. And then, strangely, a blessing in disguise happened. He clipped his finger in a door hinge and the next day, he woke up and he spoke normally again. Boy was I relieved!

About a week later, I lost my temper at him and gave him a loud and overly harsh scolding. Almost instantly, the stuttering returned - worse. He repeated every word in each sentence! This carried on for quite a few days and I noticed that he started to choose not to communicate with words. While quiet is one of the things I crave for this household, you can imagine the guilt I felt for scolding him and wishing for quiet when he was now finding it too hard to even attempt speaking. We were still in Malaysia but I made an appointment at a speech pathologist for the day after we were to arrive back. Strangely, on the same day that I made the arrangements for the appointment, he bumped his chin on the edge of a table and ended up cutting his lip. He went for a nap straight afterwards and when he woke up, he spoke normally again! I guess the brain got something else to worry about and freed up his speech or something. I was so thankful!

We still went for the appointment when we got back to Brisbane but the speech pathologist said he spoke perfectly, above average his age group in fact. She couldn't tell me anything useful because she wasn't able to observe him. We're supposed to monitor him for the next three weeks and go back.

The forced lesson from all this is that I am now about ten notches more patient. I've consciously tried to become one of those silent but deadly parents - I have not achieved this yet. There were a few times where I had to discipline Adrian, and I did this by either taking away an offending toy or removing him from a situation. He started dragging out the first words in some of his sentences again. Thankfully, it only lasted a day and then disappeared.

What am I supposed to do with a two year old that I cannot lose it with? I know you're not supposed to in the first place but it happens! I must not compare my sons but even without this problem, Adrian was well on his way to becoming a much more challenging two year old than Aaron was.

I'm Finally Starting The Year

We arrived back from Malaysia on Monday and jumped straight into things. The month away from the internet was surprisingly refreshing - I didn't suffer any withdrawal symptoms or even miss it. Apart from occasionally remembering to Skype Richard, I was happy to be offline.

I might have already missed a whole month of the calendar year but maybe I'll go by the lunar calendar instead. That way, I'm only two weeks behind. I can't say that I'm rested after a six week holiday, in fact, I am exhausted from single parenting for the past month, but I am definitely enthusiastic about starting the year. Adrian is two years old now and a little bit more independent. I want to seriously work on my own things again - bank account balance, stamina, brain capacity, and of course, this blog. Lets see if I can get back to daily blogging.

So for this first post of the year, here are the highlights of our six weeks in Malaysia.

We had a mini party for Adrian's second birthday. Many of my extended family were already in Ipoh because of Christmas so we invited them all to the house for noodles, roti canai and a banana chocolate cake. This is a photo of Adrian with all the ladies that were present. I'm still asking around for anyone who took a decent family photo of us.

Richard was only in Malaysia for about two weeks and for one of those weeks, we were in his hometown of Penang. We spent time with family there as well as a few fun days at one of the beach hotels.

The main reason for our visit back to Ipoh was for the whole family to make a big deal of Chinese New Year. Almost everybody was back. My grandparents are 89 and 94 and the whole family coming together for a big celebration means a lot to them. When I was a child, my grandmother would invite the lion dance to her house. Thirty years later, she is too old to be bothered with the hassle of it and I invited them to our house instead. I LOVE watching lion dances, the loud drums and firecrackers always put me in a festive mood. And, it has always been a dream of mine to have them come to our house in Ipoh.

In the photo above, the two lions are peeling and arranging the pomelo, mandarins and peanuts. Supposedly, its good luck to eat these things that the sweaty 'lions' have prepared.

This trip was intended to be all about my grandparents. While I did spend a lot of time with them, I left with the feeling that I still didn't spend ALL my time with them. Aaron and Adrian are still too young to just sit around and chat with old people, and, at this age, thats about all my grandparents can do. In the end, I was over at their house a lot of the time, but each time, it was only for a short period of time. I hope that I'll get another chance to do this in the future. Here is one final photo of my grandfather, Adrian and I.

Tomorrow is our first Saturday back and I plan on doing nothing. The past six weeks have been so hectic that I need to take a break now.

Are we on holidays yet?

This week has been managed to be simultaneously slow and hectic. Slow because everyone is in the holiday mood and mode but the real holidays aren't quite here yet. There is this feeling of prolonged anticipation around us. And amidst all that, I seem to have had a constant stream of things to do to get ready for our trip back to Ipoh, Malaysia tomorrow.  Multiple trips to the shops, packing and unpacking, planning what food to bring and of course how to keep the two boys entertained for nearly 12 hours.

I think I've got everything. We leave at 5.30am tomorrow and that means that there won't be any time for last minute re-packing. I used to think that as long as I had my passport, tickets and a credit card with me, all the rest won't matter. Obviously, thats not the case anymore.

My next post will probably be sometime in the new year. And, I'll have to work much harder to make my blogging more frequent otherwise there won't be a blog (or readers!) to talk about by the end of 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody!

He Rides!

It has been awhile since Aaron has hit any major milestones. When he was still a teeny baby, I did start off tracking baby milestones in a notebook but that practice was abandoned soon after he rolled over for the first time. And after he started doing the basic things like walking, talking and going to the bathroom by himself, I not only didn't write them down, I probably also stopped thinking in terms of 'milestones' for him. I'm a little ashamed to say that much of my record of his life is right here on this blog. 


Anyway, its time for another 'milestone' to be recorded here. Aaron is finally riding a bike! This has taken longer than I expected. I started teaching him in September 2009. Thats over two years ago! Perhaps its another one of those things that they'll do when they're ready. Previously, he insisted on leaving the trainer wheels on all the time. He finally outgrew that first bike I got him and when we got him a flashy new Lightning McQueen bike, I said it didn't come with any trainer wheels. 


I think this accomplishment deserves more than just a photo. Here's a video instead...

Richard and I got our exercise by taking turns jogging next to him around that oval. Maybe next time we'll be able to sit back and relax. Oh wait.... there's still Adrian. 


Here is a final photo. Is it just me or do you also see a proud look of satisfaction on his face?

I wonder if this blog will still be around when he starts driving...