Now that Anya has started nursery, she’s picking up more and more chinese as well. Which of coure is a good thing.

BUT.

I’m so hopeless at it.

Hardly any of the chinese characters can get inside my head (okay, I know a few really simple ones, but that’s about it!)

And, I can’t even confidently read the words with the curves at the top (pinyin)!

*slaps forehead*

Anyway.

Since I can’t be that much of a ‘verbal help’ to Anya, I thought it’d be good to have some of the chinese characters she’s learned displayed at home. You know, just so that she’s more familiar with them too.

And, I came across this website!

You can print out their colouring pages, worksheets (the strokes) or check out their vocabulary list (eg. names of body parts in english, pinyin and chinese character).

As for us, so far we’ve printed out some of their ‘flashcards‘ and stuck them on our wall!

Anya now occasionally walks over to the wall and identifies the characters. And Vai, well, he’d often repeat what Anya cites, and add a bit of his silly faces every now and then!

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At our place, the nearest recycling bins are about a minute away from our block. And to go and throw our recyclable stuff every day is honestly not a convenient option for me (though I’m sure the kids won’t mind)

And so at our home, we put our recyclable things (egg cartons, plastic milk bottles, cereal boxes, etc) into one big plastic bag, and we’d only bring it down to the recycling bins when it’s actually full.

Anya knows what stuff goes into which bin by now. And Vai, he wants to be actively involved too nowadays. He’d tiptoe and push each item into the relatively high bin by himself (if it gets stuck at the lid, Anya helps and pushes it further down)

The kids always look forward to our ‘recycling trip’.

And as for me, somehow I feel somewhat satisfied too, knowing that I’ve ‘rescued’ at least quite a few things that otherwise will end up being ‘useless’ in the main dump.

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Whether we like or not, in general we all have ever been ‘pretentious’.

When we’re alone or amongst people who don’t personally know us, our true characters often come out more naturally, compared to when we’re amongst people whom we’d want to impress.

When we’re amongst these certain people, our actions and words may even be ‘more holy’ than usual.

Yes it is normal and culturally understood if we act more naturally, say, when we’re at home, than when we’re at the office or at a party.

But a more important point that we need to think about is : when we think no one is looking, what do we do? when we’re in a place where we think no one knows the real us, what do we do?

Truth is, God sees everything. And God knows even the tiniest thought that goes through our mind.

So let’s be accountable and responsible for our life, words and actions. Even when ‘no one’ is looking.

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Here are some of the screenshots from the video clips we took of our little family last Saturday.

I love the film mood and feel of the shots.

Now, our next challenge will be finding the time to edit the clips (hubby’s role) as well as finding a suitable background music and producing a ’story’ (my role).

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As our family is quite into photography, our kids kind of naturally grow up seeing cameras pointing towards their faces pretty often.

I take photos nearly everyday. It’s more like a hobby to me. And on top of that, I just want to preserve as much growing-up moments with and of the kids as possible. And with that same Canon Ixus, I take video clips of the kids too, though not as much.

The thing is, despite the facts above, we don’t have that many family photos. And I mean, nice family photos. Photos that are not taken with one of our arms stretched out (read: self-taken).

And, although Wilson - in running our business - deals with video cameras too, we don’t have any nice videos of our little family too so far.

Until today.

Late afternoon today, we took some clips of the kids. And even of the four of us! (Wilson had to leave the camera on the ground, press the recording button, run towards us and sit together with us while we all look at the camera!)

I’m so happy we finally had done it.

Honestly though, I’m not too sure if we ever get to edit the clips and produce a nice video out of it.

Anyway, if we somehow manage to, I’ll sure share it with you all *smile*

PS: Since I sometimes do get asked about the kind of business that we run, I guess I’ll explain it briefly here:

we’re in the creative industry, producing works for advertising, film and television - online as well as print. We do creative concepts, graphic designs, visual effects works, 3D as well as animations.

If you feel you want to know more, just drop me an email yeah *smile*

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With Vai, mealtimes are hardly ever plain nor straight forward. Since the very first day we introduced solids to him at 5.5 months old.

And now, though he can pretty much feed himself with a big spoon and all, it’s still up to his mood - whether he’ll gobble his meal well (self-feed or spoonfed), eat three to four spoonfuls and reject the rest (even if spoonfed), or pick and slowly drop his food down to the floor!

[This is despite our continual effort in teaching him a 'better' eating manner]

And, of course, there are days too where he simply does BOTH.

Like today.

Other than using the spoon, he ‘hand-picked’ his rice, put some into his mouth, dropped some on the table and down to the floor.

And after some five minutes or so, he’d want to get down from the chair, but after some (apparently successful) distractions, he managed to finish up most of his meal by himself.

Oh well, AT LEAST he ate his food, I told myself *rolls eyes*

Anyway, click here to see Vai and his messy (yet relatively ’successful’) mealtime today.

PS: Sitting and eating by the roadside - with things readily seen by the kid - does help in keeping Vai and Anya somewhat ‘entertained’ (even if the ‘entertaining impact’ lasts for a short while, to me it’s still better than nothing)

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One interesting thing about being a fulltime mom is that you get to see a lot of (all, if they haven’t started school) their day-to-day ups and downs. Their sweet and not-so-sweet daily episodes.

And as for my case, the kids somehow have been giving me quite a few difficult moments lately.

Objects being thrown around. Spilled water (coming from the mouth!) on the floor and even on the bed. Whining and nagging. Toys being the tug-of-war objects between the two. Super slow milk drinking. Refusal to share, which often ends up with a bit of screaming and crying. Acting as if their hearing abilities are turned off. Flicking of vegetables and rice from the high chair to the dining floor. Sprinkling of baby powders on table tops and floors.

The list can go on and on. And it does get pretty interesting.

While such ‘episodes’ don’t happen throughout the day (thank goodness!), when they do, and when they’re coupled with the internet being down and stuff, they can drive me up the wall.

Okay I didn’t reach my boiling point - like I did some 3 weeks ago - but such episodes do turn my mind pretty numb at times.

From raising my voice, giving them super stern look and talk, yelling, giving a quick slap on the palm, to simply looking at the mess and behaviours, giving the kids my tired, super displeased and ‘you-should-know-this-is-wrong’ look and leaving the site only to return a few minutes later.

And when I just feel too verbally and mentally tired to explain and reason with the older one, I’d let her be by herself. In the bedroom. Where there’s zero audience to her unreasonable cries and whines (the ‘break’ gives me some time to cool my mind off too).

And after a minute or so (depending on the scale of the drama), I’d then go in and speak to her, hoping to bring the chapter to a close. If my request (for her to end her tantrums) falls on deaf ears, then I’d repeat the whole process again (leave her, and come back a few minutes later).

I’ve got to say though, God is good. When you’re just tired from handling a string of draining incidents, the kids can be really sweet, so sweet that they manage to put a little smile on a tired mom’s face.

So. There you go.

A little insight into a fulltime mommy’s day.

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A quick activity the kids did together earlier today.

You’d only need :

- a few pages of some old newspaper (choose ones with ‘colours’ on them)
- scissors and glue
- extra stickers and crayons for the little one

Basically, Anya made ‘newspaper people’ today, from newspaper cut-outs.

I asked her for the colours (ie. colours of the person’s dress, hair, shoes, etc), and I cut it out for her. She got to choose the ‘dress pattern’ from the newspaper’s ‘fashion spread’. After they’re all cut out, she stuck them on a piece of white paper.

As for Vai, I cut out different shapes for him (and went through the different shape names so he could learn these too), put on some glue on the back, and let him stick them on his paper.

In the end, he stuck on some stickers and scribbled away.

Anya sure was pleased with her ‘newspaper girl’ *smile*

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We’ve been wanting to get the kids to move into their own room, but finding the ‘right time’ to do it proves to be a little bit more difficult than we’ve first expected.

Until last Saturday, anyway.

The aircon men came and did some 8-hours worth of fixing and drilling. We moved quite a lot of our things around the place, and our home ended up really messy and dusty.

Now. When we re-arranged everything and cleaned up our home, we went ahead and arranged THEIR room and moved some of their things into it, like their drawer full of storybooks and toy boxes.

Being the bigger sister who can already understand certain things, we told her about our plan and she’s very happy about the move!

[We completely had NO idea how Vai would 'react' to the change though]

Apparently, everything went pretty well. Much to our relief.

The kids jumped on their ‘new’ beds, played and read books together. It was as if they’ve been sleeping in that room for some time already.

Oh btw, we had both our bedroom doors open as Vai is yet to master the art of ‘turning the door knob open’. He came to our room at 6.30am, climbed up to my bed and with eyes 90% still closed he asked to be nursed.

Afterwards, he came down from my bed, and I held his hand as he walked - still very much sleepy - towards his bedroom. I stopped at his bedroom door and asked him to go back to sleep. He then wobbled and walked towards his bed and plonked his sleepy head on the mattress.

He came back to our bedroom twice after that, and I did the same thing. Held his hand and took him back to his room (just right up to the door).

And it was good afterwards. They both slept well throughout the night.

We’re so happy.

PS: We plan to get Vai his own room when he’s around three years old.

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