One more SPLASH!

"Chicken, airplane, rocket," goes Jon.

"Kick, kick, kick", Kait is excited, too.

"CANNONBALL!" shouts Ben...

SPLASH!!!

All too soon, the pool's closed. And summer ends. Our three space invaders are jumping and giving their arms and legs a little workout in our bed instead!

I don't mind the silliness, but it is late.
Go brush your teeth! Time for bed!

We've gone over this many times, every night, last night, the night before that, the night before the night before that... you get the picture. And every time I ask the boys to hurry up and be done with that last game or TV show, they always beg for that one more 'splash' at whatever they're doing.

So I told them, "C'mon guys, there's no end to it! Now means NOW!!!"

To which Ben said, and he said it very coolly: Yes, there is an end... This show ends in 20 min!

?!!

Time to throw them into the deep end? Ready or not, school is starting!

(And if by this hour the youngest is still wide awake, chances are she's helping me know there's an endpoint to the daily chores, yay, but working me quite hard helping her with those froggy kicks, spiderman walk, and reach-n-pull. There's also her fave Hokey Pokey, London Bridge, and Grand Old Duke of York -- for that neverending one more splash! It was our first time doing the parent-tot classes, while Jon did level 5, and Ben, level 3, picking up where they left off the last time).

Two (y)ears... and Happy day!

Jon was right, "Two ears is two years!"!

So it was doubly nice when the cake with two cupcakes as its ears, that Kait helped bake up a storm (more like a "flour" storm from all that stirring), worked out for her second birthday :).

From last Friday:

Kait grinning from ear to ear. She digs her birthday cake...

And I mean REALLY DIGS it!

I'm trying to also load a short clip of Meimei obliging this mom with an encore of her "Happy Day" song in-between more smiles, days before that. It ends with the usual girlie twirling-around before the bigger "merry-go-round" one around me! I love her spontaneity! And now, it's on with the TERRIFIC 2's!!!

The other 'T' started closer to age 1.5 as with most tots, and is an ongoing test of my patience... from all three of them: the tot, tyke, and tween! It wears me out, and I'm not talking about the 2yo helping herself to nurse way too frequently day and night, I don't know how to wean her. But I'd better think positive and problem-solving, right?

In the last picture, Jon does a good imitation of this flattened-out mom!

Two ears is two years... Thinking simple for the cake, and just when I was wondering if I should drive out with the brood to buy one (not that it means less work than staying up), I came across a magazine's cupcake using two marshmallows as the ears of a mouse and chocolate sprinkles as its whiskers. I thought instead, why not just use two cupcakes as two ears for a bigger version? Glad it worked alright, using whatever I scrounged from our pantry to bake and decorate it simply, and left it up to Kait and her imagination to interpret what animal with two ears it turned out to be.

***

On music and lyrics... Kait hummed a good part of Oh When The Saints at 1.5yo when Jon played it on his recorder. Between 1 and 2, she likes playing the kid-size harmonica and toy xylophone, and also enjoys familiar kids' action songs like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, and The Wheels on the Bus, not just grooving and bouncing away to the Hi 5 band's catchy themesongs. Of course she'll join in her brothers' silliness, too ("silly Gor Gor, silly Meimei"), and does a funny "belly button ah-ah" when they try and sing that Veggie Tales' song!

Words wise.. by her 2nd birthday, Kait is not our most talkative child, but is saying more and strings together 4+ words per sentence E.g. Mama, I want blueberry. I like that. Blueberry please. Now. Thank you... And if she is in a sharing mood, hopefully she'll share more than just a couple of the fruit with Ben: Gor Gor like blueberry, here. Thank you (on his behalf)- welcome! Around this time is also when she can tell us if something is "too hot!", "very cold", or "fine".

Smiles and Milestones

Ben lost his first tooth on the first of this month.

Soon after that last week, Kait pedalled away on the trike!

See their 'BIG KID' smiles? :)

The growing up, and the "I did it!", are the things we try and get our children excited about on a daily basis, too, and yes, even with the most basic things! Easier said than done though. What's also true: the smiles from all three kids put smiles on my own face, too.

Why smile? Because: God loves us, gives us His peace, and wants us to grow. Came this timely reminder for me from Sunday's sermon -- of what I heard, never mind not in these exact words.

Keep going, keep growing...
The trike is our present for Kait who turns 2 today! Go, gal, go! Oh, how time flies!

The long and short of it

In the picture from last month: Kait after her bob cut, with her brothers who thought she looked different, so different that "we don't recognize her!"!

It's since grown (some), and grown on them, more or less.

But the daddy dearest up till the other day was still lamenting, on her behalf, the loss of her former (crowning) glory:

Miss Hairdresser, what have you done to my hair?!

For the record, I asked him like a hundred times before taking Kait, that was nice of my friend J to go with us earlier on our Singapore visit. It made sense in that heat and humidity, and especially with her not letting me tie her hair up or put a clip even. The rashes that flared up on her back also only cleared up after we got back.

Anyway, hair can grow back, right, was what I assured Vern -- more than once! I had mine cut, too, not that anyone really noticed ^_^!

I do of course have pictures of our li'l princess sporting her long tresses. Or should I say Her Majesty, not princess?! Ben, when asked by Auntie F in Singapore whether Kait was the princess, had replied without missing a beat, "No, she isn't. Mommy is the princess...

"Kait is THE QUEEN!"!!!

Ho, ho, ho, how'd you like that "revelation" as F called it, or should I say, more like an unspoken truth?

I really think Kait looks just as adorable, don't you think so? Do you "like it" or "don't like it", as our very own queen who's good at letting us know her preferences, says? She's quite opinionated, and also tells us "I want that" besides already associating that with "Buy!". Not so sure I like that, but it's definitely nice whenever she says "please", "thank you" and "welcome"!

***

In other hair news...
The children are in each other's hair a lot, and the crying, screaming, and fighting have me up to here :(. I'm hanging on to those really precious moments when the children will try and play nicely, and agree to help me with something around the house that's simple enough and not beyond them. I can think of so many ways, yet they have so many really-hair-pulling excuses. But it does really help me if besides the youngest being the most enthusiastic one, the older two can make an effort to pick up after themselves ("put your plate away", "dirty clothes in the hamper", and "hang back that towel") rather than having to be asked again and again.

There's also all our existing messes, not just the recent ones, we didn't just wake up to! OK, so we aren't the neatest of people, and decluttering is not my forte. Good thing the husband is not leaving me alone to try and put some order to our various messes, the house seems to be overrun with them :(. Yet only so much energy, barely, we've got left at day's end to try and work on them while the children are sleeping -- one night at a time.
It's a long shot, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it's not just in my dreams when we can have a place for everything? OK, not every single thing, but the main stuff such that the "please put away this and that" part will be more intuitive for us all.

Picture added to earlier posting, I'm trying to fill in the blanks with a shot here and there when I can get to it. But caught up as usual with my motherly and housewifey duties, I have not been able to sit down to the pictures from last month and there's still more backlog from the way-too-many-pictures I take. It's time to pare down!

Ride like the wind!

In Singapore on my father's birthday, he took the children out with me.

It must have been decades since he rode a bike. But for the boys, he gamely hopped on one, and they rode off -- with the wind in their hair!

Kait spread her wings, too, and flap, flap, flap she went after a crow scavenging on someone's discarded lunch!

She also dug sand as we watched the waves come crashing in.
So began some carefree moments during our visit, and picture the li'l girl singing her "Happy day, happy day!" song she made up out of the blue last month :).









Of course kids being kids, they get restless more easily than they stay rested.

That's true also of the rest of the boys' summer hols to try and occupy them and their sister meaningfully. There's the not playing nicely and fights among them, not just between the brothers but also when Meimei does her "bully Gor Gor" to Ben!

More later, I'm toggling between the past and present to write it down when I can steal a moment, and write it out 'coz I need to (for my sanity)!







(Pixes added to earlier posting).