Let Your Imagination Go Wild!

Her latest addiction: selfies! 

These days, with Little Bee reading a lot more before bedtime, we kind of stopped reading English bedtime stories. Every other day, I will still read Chinese storybooks to her though. However, on days when it is English storytelling time, we had taken to rattling off our own bedtime stories because Little Bee told me that listening to bedtime stories with me is something that she really looks forward to every night. Hubby and Little Bee are especially creative at this, spinning tales of hilarity, total creativity and ridicule at times! I am not as innovative nor wacky as the both of them, frankly.

One night, Little Bee spun such a beautiful story of a candy land that I thought of sharing here. Enjoy...and goodnight!

Quoted from Little Bee directly:

"There was a land with clouds just like cotton candy, where it rains chocolate drops in a purple sky. And during the birthday of every child, lots of candies will be rained down just outside the child's house. It rains different candies outside my house every day because I am the queen of this land!

In this land, tree trunks are log cakes that could be eaten anytime. Leaves are minty food and flowers are nectar with bubblegum flavours. The houses are made of biscuits flavoured with vanilla and chocolate. My house has rainbow-coloured flavours!

Only bakers in this land can build houses, because all the houses are edible and delicious! Pillows are made of cotton candy. The grass is minty, and exhaust fumes from cars are bubbles! There is no insects like flies or ants in this land. Cows are candy cows and cars are chocolate cars!

Yawn....goodnight!"

Paint The Afternoon Away!

We spent a fun, creative afternoon painting our blues away in Arteastiq, a Victorian-looking cafe with a big space for creative expression on canvas. It was so therapeutic and a great way for family bonding by giggling over and appreciating each other's paintings. 

Although we did paint at home sometimes, this was a different experience because the Bees were able to sit down and really focus on creating something from a clean slate. We were also inspired by myriad creative ideas of other painters around us, and could stick to an idea and paint it through.We could paint anything we want, and for the less inspired, there were booklets with picture ideas that we could emulate.

I love the different emotions fleeting through me when painting. Emotions like being reflective before painting. I usually looked deep within myself and examined my mood and propensities before painting. I usually like landscapes because they remind me of escapism into another land far far away.

Wonderment and curiosity. When I first laid my brush on a clean slate, I would never fail to marvel at the richness of colours, the dexterity of human fingers and the ability of the human mind to create something out of nothing. For me, painting never followed any predicted paths (although, frankly, I am but a rudimentary painter). I would usually experiment with different strokes, textures and colours, so I am constantly infused with a sense of curiosity about where all these would lead me.

Frustration (at times). Sometimes, I would experiment and play around with the brush strokes and colours to the extent that the outcome was very different from what I had envisaged initially. But I would adapt and adjust constantly. And this is the most important life lesson I learned from painting - that it is perfectly fine to make mistakes and that we can always adapt and change, so that these mistakes become blessings in disguise. I kept emphasizing this to the Bees, especially perfectionist Big Bee, whenever they grumbled that they mixed the wrong colours or painted the wrong strokes, etc. And I think painting is a wonderful way for children to learn to experiment and adapt!

And finally, satisfaction and gratification when I sat back at last and breathed a sigh of happiness.

Hubby's painting and his fabulous attempt at blending colours for a complete newbie! 

This was mine, and yes, I was dreaming of living on a deserted island at that point of time!

Big Bee's painting - she wanted to paint pop art for a change. This was her first attempt at graphical pop art and I thought it was so bright and colourful!

Little Bee's attempt to convert a landscape into a 2D pop-art portrait - can you spot the waterfall, overlaying branch and river boulders?

A Date With Shakespeare

We had a date with Shakespeare a couple of months ago where we watched The Merchant Of Venice in Fort Canning, under a starry night with balmy evening breezes.

Check out the crowds! We were lucky to have found an area right in front of the stage to plonk ourselves down! 

It was the Bees' first exposure to a play by the Bard, with full-fledged Shakespearean language. They had read a lot of his plays in adapted versions, in regular English, and we had talked about The Merchant Of Venice before this play. However, it was still a delight to see them looking quizzical in the first few minutes, whispering furtively, "Mummy! What language are they speaking in?" Haha.

I read the Merchant of Venice synopsis to them before the play, so the Bees were aware of the key protagonists and the main plot (and subplots). Once the play started and they got used to the archaic language, they were slowly drawn into the dramatic twists and hyperbole of Shakespeare's magic.

My qualms about this play were that 1) the setting was constructed deliberately in a modern setting with techno music (call me an old-fashioned, unadaptable fool, but I would prefer a good ol' Shakespearean play over these new modern re-adaptations!) and that 2) I wish more local actors could be in main roles since this was organised by a local theatre production company. The 2 key protagonists were non-Singaporeans. Otherwise, I thought it was a lovely evening out with the family, just kicking our shoes off, sitting back on the grass and simply having a chillax time!

Travel Memoirs: Flying Solo

Travelling long distance for business can be very lonely. Recently, I took a 30-hour flight to Florida on a work trip. There were 3 different flights, 4 airport changes (including the airport of departure) and 2 relatively long periods of transit in New York and Frankfurt. And I am not even including the journey back home! 

At every intersection, I saw families and friends reuniting, hugging, chatting and smiling. Lone business travellers like me just ambled around sterile and commonplace airport shops, sat in airport lounges together with lots of other bored business travellers, and watched endless movies on the plane. Surrounded by so many different people, I had never felt lonelier. Yet, back home, when I am just ensconced in the love and warmth of our little family of 4 (and sometimes with our parents too!), I had never felt more contented.

I do get lots of time to reflect upon many things in life on these trips though – from trivial matters like what the kids are doing in school to deeper reflections about life in general.

While humanity is all about communication, lone business travellers often times only have the company of their own thoughts. On occasions like these, I had many conversations with myself throughout the journey and got in touch with myself again. It was a lot easier to observe beautiful things around me. Little beauties like fireworks under a full moon as the plane departed from New York . The changing multi-hued shades of sunset at 9pm on a long summer day in New York. Beautiful patches of emerald German farm land as the plane got ready to descend into Frankfurt. Watching a wakening Singapore as the soft, magical wings of a purple-hued dawn swept across our island that was aglow with the twinkling lights from the night before. 

 Lonely yes, but comfortably alone. And I relish such chances to observe the world so closely without distractions from the boisterous kids. 

My gregarious girls had talked about their fear of being alone and doing things on their own. Which is understandable at their ages. Sometimes, I wonder how we can help eradicate the fear of being alone in our children. So that peer influence may not be that much of a deal. So that they are perfectly contented – like us – wherever they are, so long as they have the companionship of a book, their eyes (for observing things around them!) and conversations with themselves. Some kids cope better with this but my kids are social beings, and I find that it is harder to encourage them to do things on their own, without the company of their friends or us. Well, let’s see how else I could encourage them….

A Month Of Free Rein

The June holidays had been gloriously unfettered. I took half the month off to spend time with the Bees, and the days were long, luxurious and languorous. We went on a very short trip to Cambodia, and then spent all our time back here in Singapore. Although I always enjoy new experiences when travelling overseas, I discovered the beautiful virtue of leisurely days spent at home. No agenda, no hurriedness, no deadlines to meet. And I don't just mean me. The Bees had the time of their lives not worrying about their school schedules and homework as well! 

However, this is the PSLE year after all, so Big Bee - being the disciplined girl she is - did immerse herself in some light revision. But no drilling, whatsoever. I believe in letting her enjoy the June holidays to the fullest, before the intensive PSLE revision this coming term. Play helps to boost brain power, in my opinion! 

This holidays were epic in the sense that we had plenty of playdates with different friends of the Bees. There were trips to the malls, outdoor playgrounds, movies, concerts, Adventure Cove, Universal Studios, Starbucks - just plenty of opportunities to bond with friends. We spent loads of time with the cousins as well. Little Bee attended an amazing zoo camp with a close cousin of hers, and there were play dates where the 2 generations of cousins gossiped incessantly. A very close cousin of ours got married, and we had the time of our lives bonding and having plenty of fun and laughter at the wedding. 

On the family front, we played lots of board games, we had many lazy mornings spent at Starbucks (Big Bee has a latest teenage addiction to frappuccino, and could not stop drinking them!), we read plenty of books and watched home movies. Simple activities but plenty of bonding. 

Life is leisurely and carefree, days are long and beautiful - and we could forget about the usual hassles of living in a fast-paced society for a while. Here's to more holidays with zero agenda!