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I finished the book “My sister’s keeper” over the weekend, where I cried buckets. Imagine you are a “designer baby” Anna born specifically so that you can donate whatever that is needed for your sister who has leukemia since she is two. You are thirteen now and you finally decide enough is enough and sue your parents for the right to your own body. What is right, what is wrong, what is moral, what is selfish…all these are explored and from each person’s perspective. A kidney is needed next, Anna who thinks that “I am important too!”, Sara - the mother who is doing everything she can to keep a child alive, Kate - the sister who is sick is perhaps thinking something else altogether!

I admit I was puzzled as to how someone could suddenly turned so selfish and I was speeding towards the end without really savouring the journey. But the revelation of why Anna was doing it was so startling but it also felt so right and the ironic ending at the end just blew me away.

Yesterday I popped in the disc to watch the movie and boy! did i cry more! The movie had a different ending altogether and until now i can’t quite decide which ending i like better. But this reminded me of a movie between sisters/friends “Wings beneath my wings” which made me cry like mad too! To perk myself up, what I have in my bag now for my mrt reading is “confessions of a shopaholic”, comedy I am told. Let’s hope it will work its magic!

They may scream at each other, push each other, snatch each other’s toys…but how much more fun it is when you can play together…

One of Talia’s Christmas gift was the BambinoLUK learning system. A dear friend from Germany brought it all the way home for her. She has been trying to describe to me how this little learning tool works but I have not been able to fully understand until I see it with my own eyes how it is played.

This learning system aims to allow children 3-5 years old develop in my opinion visual perception, logical thinking and concentration. There is essentially a controller where there are 6 large tiles - namely car, heart, house, duck, flower and apple in a transparent case and work books.

In the books, you would have 6 pictures on top and 6 pictures below. The 6 pictures on top would have on its left upper corner a little icon corresponding to the 6 tiles. The 6 pictures below would, depending on the theme, each correspond to one picture on top. The child’s task is to find out the corresponding pictures.

Let’s see how Talia finish this exercise that she is doing for the first time.

Just to make it easier to understand. The orange lion on top has the “apple” icon on its top left corner, so Talia would have to place the “apple tile” on top of the picture with the colour orange below. Once its done, you can close the controller and turn it around to check whether you got everything right by comparing the coloured balls behind the tiles with the picture given in the workbook. So the child could do self-checks as well.

Wonderfully easy but the child would have to have a continuous and logical train of thought to fulfill this task. Not to mention, when the exercise starts, scan through all the pictures on top and all the pictures below to find out what is the connecting relationships between them.

Talia’s gift came with the controller and 4 work books. I was told a shop at United Square is selling the system but it doesn’t come cheap. When the opportunity arises that I could ask another friend to bring it back from the US, I jumped at the chance and bought all that that could be bought at amazon.com (which incidentally is only 3 sets of 5 books each). I was told by my German friend there are like hundreds of books available and because the exercises transcend language, when Talia finishes all these, I guess I would have no choice but to buy from amazon.de!

I can never get enough of the weekends! We bring the kids everywhere. And last Sunday we thought we would go and visit the newly opened Resorts World at Sentosa after church.

Parking was at $7 for the first hour and $2 per hour thereafter. I guess the S$7 took care of the entrance fee to sentosa. Universal Studios isn’t open yet. The whole place still has an unfinished feel about it with sections still condoned off with construction going on. There were quite a bit of people milling around even though as far as I can see, there isn’t much to do there. We made our way to where the action seems to be concentrated and it turned out it was the casino entrance. With kids in tow and never quite into gambling, we took a quick peep around and left, but I must say there was no wow factor nor does the entrance inspire any feelings of grandeur at all!

Ciggies-dangling kids ready to give the casino a run for its money?

We were naive enough to think that there should be quite a bit of food choices open and were sorely disappointed to find only Chillies and this other smallish noodles place Ruyi open. We settled for some beef noodles and dumplings and were then all ready to explore the rest of Resorts World.

We walked towards Festive Hotel and there was a staff at the counter doing balloon sculpting for children. She is clearly an amateur and her flower for the little girl looks a bit weird that I didn’t even bother to take a pic! *grins* The little boy’s sword…well at least it still looked like a sword!

Ditch the ciggie for a sword?

We went the opposite direction and went past boutiques like Victoria’s secret, (loads of lacy stuff in a big and bright open concept store, I wonder who would want to finger those lingerie in plain view of anyone walking by?) ferragamo, swaroski and what-nots!

Then, at the junction between two hotels (I can’t remember which one now for I am THAT bad at directions), a really fat Adam and Eve and their good friend the snake appeared! Perhaps a good dig at how our waistlines are ever increasing?

Obese Adam and Eve!

We walked for a little while more around, took a quick look at the souvenir store (quite a small one actually with strange mahjong-tiles tees for sale) and left totally not impressed with the place. Perhaps when Universal Studios is open, the entire experience would be different.

We wanted to do some shopping at Vivo and went to park at harbourfront. This is one of Kev’s favourite shopping venue for Sundays because its per entry parking at $2.04 for the whole day. Talk about Vivo City and he would beam! hehe!

Toys r us is a must and the little boy woke up from just napping half hour to all the screaming and shouting inside the toy store. I get tired just by seeing how they zipped from one shelf to the other looking and exploring the toys!

Taking a break on this little cute sofa!

Then we went Marks and Spencer for biscuits, Giant for diapers (can you believe it that no one in Bishan North Mall sells Pampers!), Cold storage for Cheerios (can you believe it that only Cold Storages sell Cheerios!)…anyway, in between we fed both children milk and tried to get them to nap in the Peg but to no avail.

Then we trooped into Page One just in time for their story telling session!

Enthralled!

Then it was into Daiso for more $2 goodies! by the time we are done, it was already 6pm. We would have let the children have a go at the shallow water area at the 3rd floor right outside Daiso if it wasn’t raining. We grabbed our favourite Pho noodles at Kopitiam (by then the little girl was snoozing in the stroller), tapao her favorite teriyaki salmon bento and headed home.

(Incidentally she woke up when we were still on the way home and ate her dinner in the car because she was so hungry! )

We went a-visiting to Declan’s on the third day of the Chinese New Year and took a shot of all the children in their Chinese New Year get-up!

The boys all looked like they jumped right out of a kungfu movie!

That first few days of the Chinese New Year were exceptionally hot and declan’s folks took out the baby pool! This has to be the children’s most enjoyable visit in all their CNY visiting!

Last sat was Kev’s birthday! I bought a cake and celebrated with him and the children at home! The kids were thrilled! The little boy particularly went around the house saying “Hap day”, his version of “Happy Birthday”!

When we sang the Happy Birthday song, he contributed by singing the “YOU!”

Noticed how quiet the little girl is, she couldn’t take her eyes off the cake! Yes! She lurves cakes that much!

I have something great to reveal!

Happy birthday Daddy!

Woof! Woof!
Cookie Girl

This was one rare time that he did not stop counting when my phone was whipped out.

I was told by my helper Rose that the little guy yesterday, after school, ran up to her calling “auntie auntie!”

and then proceeded to ask her,

“Where’s meme?”

Rose told him that I am in the office.

Then he continued,

“Where’s papa?”

Rose told him that he is at the office too!

Then he persisted,

“Where’s jiejie?”

Then he dashed into the living room, pointed to his sister who was playing by herself there and said,

“Thereeeeeeeeeeeeee!’

and then started chuckling!

I was torn between wanting to laugh and feeling sad…I am not sure if the awareness that I am not at home during the day just came to him or that he knew all along but only have the capability to verbalise it now.

Going to work on this Friday morning with a heart a little heavier than usual…

This is now the little boy’s favourite phrase! He will lift up his hands, palms facing up and jiggle them up and down and go “Where’s jie jie?” cheekily.

He also did his first 4-word sentence - screaming “I want to go!” last week when he saw us getting dressed and ready to go out of the house without him! I think nothing like desperation to conjure up an intelligible sentence to make sure we know what he wants!

He is now able to imitate almost all the words we say to him, whether he understands them or not is another matter altogether though. He recites 1 to 10 in both English and Mandarin now but I think he has no concept of counting yet though. We have the 我会读 level 1 mandarin flashcard-concept books and he could follow after us and read almost all the words with I would say 95% correct pronunciation. We were actually rather impressed because Talia’s mandarin is still rather accented compared to his.

Singing remains a favourite with him and he could carry a tune quite well, doing his rendition of twinkle twinkle little star with maybe about 50-60% of the words clearly audible (usually the beginning and the ending words) and the alphabet song with the same tune, with most of the alphabet audible too. We did not bother to teach him any alphabet and he picked up singing the alphabet song from the leapfrog fridge magnet thingy. But I think he recognises quite a number of alphabets because at the trial montesorri class, he stood up and shouted “M” when he saw it! Took us by surprise actually.

Our stern NO is still able to deter him from doing certain things. Like when he wants to climb up the stairs and we say NO, he will stay there and whine “I want!”. When we repeat our NOs, he will start crying with more “I want”s but will not climb the stairs anymore.

He melts my heart by calling me “meme” (nobody taught him that and Talia calls me “mummy”) and rushing over to me calling out “hold hands” when we are out walking. At 18 mths now I really think he can’t get any cuter than this, walks like a penguin, grins like a cheshire cat, chuckles like an old man and talks in a cartoony voice! and boy, how much I love this little guy!