Vanishing Neighbourhoods

It was a lazy rustic afternoon with balmy sunrays and a steadfast docile breeze. There was an idyllic hush in the neighbourhood, marred only by the bashful whispering of the abundant leaves in the dignified angsana and rain trees surrounding us. Occasionally, we heard the apologetic rustling of a cleaner's broom against old tiles. A lone elderly woman wandered past, her mind focused on mirages of days long gone. A few groups of teenagers sauntered past, their young pristine minds unaware of the crowds that used to throng the very same pavement that they were walking on. 

Mum, the Bees and I were enchanted by these charming scenes in the old fading neighbourhood of Queenstown. We were at the library along Margaret Drive, enjoying a peaceful afternoon of books and coffee (and yummy potato wedges for the Bees!) yesterday. When we emerged from the cool air condition into the warm sunshine kissing our faces, we were bewitched by a picturesque yet crumbling neighbourhood. 

Hush hush in the library!

We sat down beneath a voluminous pong pong tree, with the Bees admiring its flourishing flora and bright green fruits (Little Bee thought they were apples!). We looked back at the weary hawker centre that had seen more vibrant days. Mum was instantly transported back to the dating days where Dad and her used to frequent the adjacent cinema before their regular suppers at the very same hawker centre.

The hawker centre that had seen many generations. Unfortunately, it will be closing soon.

Her faraway eyes indicated a nostalgic journey down the many years. Mum told me, "All these places will soon be upgraded and demolished. And what's left of them will just be within my memories." She also remarked how amazing it is to have 3 generations of us sitting now in the same place that Dad and her dated. 

The very same setting in a totally different stage of life. Life does sidle past us in such a swift and stealthy manner. As parents, I think it is fundamental that we bring our children to all these nooks and crannies of Singapore, so that they can truly understand the past and present, and apply these knowledge to their future. 

Her First Birthday In School

Last Monday, we had a very early birthday celebration for Little Bee in her school, ahead of the school holidays, so that she can experience her first birthday party in school with all her little friends around her. 

My mom, Hubby and I wrapped little presents for all her classmates the night before - comprising of a Ty soft toy (they get either a red dog that looks very much like Clifford or a brown bear donning a Christmas santa hat), Disney colouring and sticker book and an assortment of candies and snacks! We resembled a factory assembly line when we were wrapping up the goodies! 

The following day when we arrived in school, Little Bee was bounding around in the playground. When she saw me observing her, she rushed to me and started kissing the entire length of my forearm right in front of her classmates, who were all staring at us like we were aliens from outer space! Back in the classroom, as we entered the class, Little Bee stared at us with red-rimmed, watery eyes - probably overwhelmed by the fact that all of us were with her in school. 

Earlier, during lunch, I rushed to buy an off-the-shelf cake and several animal and ladybird candies to spruce up the plain blackforest cake. I was rather proud of my cake decoration! 

What difference a few jungle animals and ladybirds can make to a cake! These are edible and very delicious too! 

As we sang the birthday song, Little Bee's big round eyes lit up and she sang happily and proudly with all her teachers and friends. She also chattered louder and more frequently, probably borrowing the courage from the fact that her closest family was there with her friends. 

Say "cheeeeese"! 

This is her third birthday, and the first celebration with friends of hers. As I stared at her vivacious face, I cannot believe that my little baby is now on the road to independence, following so closely in the footsteps of her sister, who is now a little lady in so many aspects. I hope both of them will not leave Hubby and me hobbling behind them in this swift voyage of time.

Happy imminent 3rd birthday, my little one.

Party For Party's Sake!

There should never be a compelling reason for a good party - at least, that's the belief of my maternal cousins and me! Which was why we decided to throw a little bash at my place's function room last Sunday for 3 main reasons: 1) A fantastic chance for all the cousins, uncles and aunties to get together, 2) for the kids to have great fun and 3) simply to be happy! 

So, the 3 of us, Irene, Fio and me, got together and rented a bouncer and an automatic train on track, and I threw in the Bees' electric car, and voila! We had something that resembled a mini amusement park that could distract the little ones so that we adults can relax! (Although in the end, the kids became so wild on the bouncer that all we cousins could do were to stand around the bouncer and guard them!) But we were really happy to see the uncles and aunties happily chatting away, with my mum uttering to me, "The night passed by too quickly!" Happiness indeed!

A party should always have 3 quintessential ingredients: 1) Great company, 2) wonderful programme and 3) fabulous food! I think we fulfilled the first 2, and we spurred our mothers to create a huge potluck session so we can be treated to sumptuous delicacies! And indeed, we had no lack of good food - succulent fried bee hoon, ambrosial yam rice, delectable yam cake, mouthwatering chicken curry, fragrant nuggets and a whole array of magnificant snacks and desserts! It was a sight to behold as the food slowly took up 2 whole tables, just like a buffet spread - only that this time, the food was prepared with love, hard work and lots of care! 

The kids truly enjoyed themselves, turning quite delirious at some points, all happy beyond words. We hope to organise more of these great parties in future so that the kids - themselves cousins - can grow up like the great buddies that we are, and the aunties and uncles can sit back and look at their grandchildren with beaming joy.

The Bees with Val just after the bouncer was set up - highly elated!

Giddy enjoyment: Bees with cousins Peixuan, Ting Ting and Zhong Ting

 

Cute little Val and Chloe jumping away in the bouncer!  

Gourmet Chef

Last Thursday, after the kids' dinner and evening baths, I put them in the good hands of Hubby and my mum just an hour before their bedtime, and set forth to my good friend WH's house for a girly night with another good pal, J. 

WH was cooking dinner for us! She had always been a good cook, and I am lucky to savour a few samplings of her excellent cooking and baking since our university days. Earlier in the day, J and I were bowled over by WH's email featuring her impressive 3-course dinner for us:

Starter

Salad drenched in balsamic olive oil dressing with sprinklings of walnuts

Main

Pan-fried red snapper fillets with mini baked potato gratin (I absolutely love the potato gratin and unashamedly ravished 2 of those!)

Dessert

Custard tart with juicy peach slices

Isn't that just A-M-A-Z-I-N-G? Throughout the night, J and I could not stop feeling bewildered at how calm and unflustered WH was. She was an excellent hostess, even cooking the mains while J and I were finishing up the starter so the fish fillets would be fresh and succulent!

We chatted, we laughed, we giggled about life in general while savouring the gourmet delights that WH created for us. Indeed, it is such a blessing to have great girlfriends in your life - to share our happiness, sorrow and silly trivial things that only girls will appreciate. 

I came home that night, satisfied and still amazed! 

Balletic Enchantment

Big Bee had her Grade 1 ballet exam on 8 November - her 3rd exam, which means she should be fairly relaxed and seasoned about it. Yet, the little Miss Perfectionist was apprehensive about a poor performance the night before - as always! 

I am constantly showering her with optimistic reassurances as she tends to display strong anxiety before stressful events, and this time, I assured her that we were all bowled over by her performance during the Open House. She was somewhat soothed, but only just a little.

The Open House was conducted in late October, and Little Bee was so inspired by all the ballerina jie-jies that she kept requesting for ballet classes thereafter! Not so soon, little one :) She posed proudly with jie jie and all her friends, skipping around the dance studio like it was her second home. 

Posing happily with the excellent ballet teacher

The Grade 1 exams comprised a lot more ballet techniques and includes a duet and a solo dance that were more complicated. Yet, it was exhilarating to see all the little girls dancing with earnest sobriety and nimble grace. 

As expected, she was back to her jovial self right after the exams, dashing about in carefree delight, a little adult in her sophisticated ballerina bun with an exquisite pink ribbon peeping from underneath the bun, yet with the naive demeanour and high energy of a little girl. The juxtaposition is truly alluring. 

Exhilaration and relief post-exams! 

Around The World In One Night

I have a weakness for buying national costumes for the Bees when I travel. They have a plethora of traditional ensembles from Vietnam to Japan, Myanmar to India. I regretted not buying a hanbok from Seoul when we were there last December. 

One lazy evening last month, when we were fiddling around for some activities, I suggested a fancy dress parade in line with the theme "All About Me". Dressing them up in costumes of different countries was a wonderful way to impart cultures and geographical knowledge of various countries to the Bees, while having lots of hilarious fun! It also reinforced different aspects of individuality to them, emphasizing the fundamental notion that we are living in a highly diverse world, yet reiterating our common humanity in this shrinking planet. 

We laughed till our tummies ached whenever there was a fresh change of costumes, and the vain Bees will parade up and down the living room. Big Bee would painstakingly find matching shoes/socks and accessories while re-enacting national "gestures" like a deep Japanese bow and putting together her palms namaste-style when she donned on her Myanmar costume! And Little Bee would stare at the mirror everytime I changed her, fascinated by her costumes! 

Pure fun indeed! I truly enjoyed myself! 

Introducing Miss Myanmar and Miss Vietnam

Erm, a national costume of Princessland, Cinderella! And a really comfortable yukata from Japan. 

Little Bee wanted to be a ballerina just like her big sister, so I dug out Big Bee's old ballet costume for her and it fit perfectly! Time for ballet classes?

Learning At Home: All About Me

October was all about the concept of "me", where the Bees learned everything about themselves! We completed so many activities that I will divide this entry into 2 parts. We were interrupted in our activities for 2 weeks with Big Bee's exams, but thereafter, we picked up our fun with more flurry, and I constantly had trouble brainstorming more engaging activities for Big Bee!

Part 1 is about name recognition and body parts, so the Bees were excitedly using their fingers and mouth to create artpieces, instead of the traditional paintbrushes or colour pencils!

Featured books

Who Am I? Where Did I Come From? (An amazing pop-up, 3D book that inculcates sex education to our children and teaches them about the miracle of conception)

Your Amazing Body (More suited for older children like Big Bee, but the abundant illustrations will attract the little ones on what goes on inside our bodies, beyond the skin!)

Key song

Head and shoulders

Name recognition

I finally managed to teach Little Bee to recognise her name, as well as that of Big Bee's and us, using a variety of homemade flashcards. We used the names of her friends so that she could feel a strong sense of familiarity and association, which I thought was very important when learning new words. We simply laid out flashcards of all our names, and when prompted, she would pick out her name. She also recognised her name (and ours!) when we showed her the respective flashcards. 

Name writing

As Little Bee enters into N2 next year, when they will start to write their names in school, I decided I had better teach her to write her name properly. I found it more challenging to teach Little Bee compared to Big Bee, probably because she is a year end baby with very short attention span. I usually felt deadbeat after every name-writing session! 

Her first attempt to write the 1st 2 letters of her name, before she decided to indulge in some self portrait. She probably thought it is visually more exciting to draw her face than to write some boring old letters!

Finally, Big Bee and I brainstormed to make writing a fun game for her, so Big Bee started writing her name on these heart-shaped foam templates. Little Bee followed soon after. The beauty of these foam templates is that I could use my fingernails and indent the letters, so Little Bee only needed to trace over some of the letters. 

Craft: My face

Little Bee definitely prefers art and craft to any writing (sigh). Hence, she was diligently completing her facial features in this paper plate craft. I used painted yarn as hair, and the strips of hair are a great way to teach her the concept of opposite (long versus short hair) as well as counting. Eyeballs and pretty eyelashes with compliments from me :)

Math: Concept of opposites

I let Big Bee trace her hand and foot, and I did the same for Little Bee. When you placed them side by side, the girls can learn about "big" and "small", as well as the concept of "self", how big or small they are in relative to someone else. 

General knowledge: Body parts

I used a large piece of paper and asked Little Bee to lie down on it and traced the outline of her upper torso. She then filled in her face but was too distracted to draw in her hair :( The sisters then spent some time (in which I can relax!) putting together this body parts puzzle - of course jie-jie was diligently matching the harder body parts. Great to teach the kids the different parts of a body. 

Painting: Fingerpainting

I taught the girls to paint using only their fingers, without brushes. Big Bee taught Little Bee the names of all our fingers (which I cannot really remember!) - Mr Thumb, Foreman, Tall Man, Ringman and Pinkie. I am sure I got the names wrong! 

Little Bee's caterpillar painted with only her thumb - she drew in the face and I completed the rest of the legs and feelers. She needed a bit of guidance for this as it was not easy to gauge the spaces between the different colours. 

Big Bee's work of art - she painted everything painstakingly with only her thumb and fingers. The grass, tree trunk and caterpillar were painted with her thumb, whereas the rest were with her forefinger and little pinkie. I really love this painting of hers :) 

Painting: Straw painting

We then proceeded to learn about painting using only their mouths through a straw. I took this opportunity to teach them about how air comes out from our lungs out through our mouths, and they kept blowing air out incessantly! They had fantastic fun blowing paints of different colours through their straws (which resulted in me having some me-time of my own!)

Huffing and puffing!

Big Bee's blow-art

Little Bee's creation

Convivial Fiesta

Last Friday, I volunteered to be a parent helper at Big Bee's school funfair. It was thoroughly enjoyable and transported me back to the yesteryears of funfairs in the days of secondary school. The fellow parent volunteers and I had such a memorable time bonding and giving back to the school that nurtured our children so well in this past year!

The wares that we hawkered in sweltering heat! 

I decided to borrow pages from Big Bee's diary to showcase the event from her perspective. I think it will be a lot more meaningful, especially if she is reading this in future. It is also intriguing to peep into a child's mind every once in a while - to bring us back to that age of naivety and idealism. 

PS: Her diary entry was written last Saturday - and she wrote it independently, only showing it to me when she completed her rather long entry (it took up 6 precious pages of her diary!). The below is unedited. Enjoy! 

*******************************

Written by Big Bee

Big Bee with her friends

Yesterday was very fun! It was the last day of school! There was a fun fair. Mummy went in with me to school because she was a parent volunteer. She was selling kueh lapis and fried beehoon in the canteen. I went out with Rachael from 1.6 and some of my classmates. The fun fair was called "All Things Great and Small, All Creatures Big and Small". I ate chocolate marshmellows and drank Ribena. I also ate a purple candy floss and one ice lolly. 

The food was all sold out through clever marketing by the parents! 

After I ate the food, I went to see Mummy in the canteen. She was selling food to the students, parents and some of the teachers. Hanna-Joy, my classmate, wanted me to go to a money catching game. The queue was very long so we decided to go to another game. We went to a fun game. The game is to try to shoot a ball into a hole. I won some stickers. After that, I went up to class to get my wallet. It was Mummy's birthday so I decided to buy a birthday present for her. I bought a beautiful paperweight crystal from the bookshop. 

When Mummy finish selling everything, I went to beauty world. It was at the primary hall. Mummy went with me. I did a tattoo on my wrist and used the other half of the tattoo to make a ring. Popo, Papa and (Little Bee) came. Papa bought a school bear. It was wearing a uniform that was the same as mine. 

Little Bee was thrilled by the adorable balloons - sculpted by a pair of elderly grandparents! Amazing! 

Mummy and my classmates were happily talking about the haunted house in my school. Then, suddenly it started raining very heavily with loud thunder. We all screamed and ran back to class. Mummy followed us back to class. All my friends started crowding around Mummy. They were telling Mummy things about the haunted house. In the haunted house, there was a dead ballerina who asked everybody to find her shoe or they will be captured. I did not go to the haunted house because it was very scary. All my friends also said it was very scary. The haunted house was in the dance room. Georgia, one of my classmates that went in the haunted house, said there are lots of scary things. 

After talking, Mummy waited for me at the parents' corner. After that, I went home. The fun fair was very fun. At night, it was Halloween. Me, Rachael and Karen went for trick or treating. 

Obama

Last night, as I was eating dinner, Big Bee came forth and told me with much conviction, "Mummy, I want to marry Mr Obama! I think he is soooo handsome and very clever! And he is the greatest king!" (I think she meant President - she doesn't know the difference yet)

And when I told her he is coming to Singapore next week for the Apec meeting, she was in a flurry of excitement and started shooting fast questions at me, "Which hotel is he staying? Can I go there and meet him?" 

She then proceeded to ask me, "Why is he so important? Why is America so powerful? How big is America?" 

Sometimes, I find it hard to answer some of her questions in simple language! But I am glad she is taking a liking to powerful men ;) 

Spooky Halloween

The Bees celebrated Halloween with their friends through the spine-chilling tradition of tricking and treating in our estate. The households who are interested in dishing out treats will have a sticker stuck on their doors, and their unit numbers will be featured in a list given to the eager children, so non-participating households like ours will not be disturbed by over-zealous kids!

Big Bee was busy dressing up as a witch excitedly, way before the event. My mum dabbed on creepy white eye shadow on her and helped apply a layer of dark blue nail polish to make her look witchy!

The Bees in their Halloween costumes: Light versus Dark?? 

She invited her best friend Rachael, as well as another neighbour Karen and her little sister. As I was walking her home from school earlier, Rachael, Karen and Big Bee were chatting incessantly about what to wear! Girls will be girls, I guess! 

We were fairly hesitant about not letting Little Bee join the trick-or-treat expedition, for fear that she may end up being spooked. But poor her was so enthusiastic about dressing up that we just donned on a pair of fairy wings and an angel's halo, complete with a sparkling wand, so she can be a little good witch. 

The girls met each other amidst much hullabaloo and thrilled squeals. A storm with dense dark clouds was brewing overhead, making this the perfect setting for a creepy Halloween night. Already, there were many little devils, demons and witches scurrying about, busy finding the houses for tricks and treats. Children's chilling screams emanated all around, creating an ominous atmosphere of eerie fear. The older girls in our group were getting impatiently excited - running ahead to find the first household. 

The tricks-or-treats gang: (from left) Karen, Rachael, the Bees and my Mum, Karen's little sister 

Hubby and I did not follow them as we adjourned for my birthday dinner. However, Mum followed with Little Bee in tow. Thereafter, she told me that Little Bee was really spooked after 2 households, frightened by the silent little ghouls that guarded the 2nd home fearlessly, as well as by the elaborate Halloween facades and costumes decorated by many innovative families. Henceforth, she brought Little Bee into the safe sanctuary of our home immediately. 

Our domestic helpers followed the rest of the older girls around. Big Bee told me she loves Halloween, but she was rather startled by the ghostly decorations of some of the homes, complete with moving skeletons and abruptly shocking appearances of some human apparitions! 

I heard from my mum and helper that Big Bee was like a little leader, paving the way, knocking on doors and yelling "Trick or Treat!!!" before her friends. I am really glad she enjoyed herself independently, and I am sure she loves Halloween for a more concrete reason - a mountainload of goodies!