Budding Novelist?

Big Bee and her best friend in school, Claire, are turning into fledgling authors. Their favourite activity during recess is to quickly gobble down their home-packed food, then they will rush up to their classroom to co-author self-made books! 

This was their first attempt which Big Bee brought home proudly a couple of weeks ago. The following week, I asked her if Claire got to bring it home to show her Mummy. Guess what she told me? They both sold it to another girl during recess for a neat price of $4! Apparently, they were both discussing about selling this little book of theirs in the canteen, when an older girl sitting beside them overheard and wanted to buy it. Talk about budding entrepreneurs too! I was seriously shocked for the rest of the evening, really. 

Here's their book below - enjoy reading :) (Don't mind some of the spelling and grammar mistakes though, as they wrote it without a dictionary or an adult around)

Cover of the book: The Story Of Cheeseland

Text of cover by Claire

Illustrations by Big Bee

(I find it absolutely hilarious that they even tagged promotions on buying the book, like magazines promotions!)

Left page: Text written by Big Bee, illustrations by Claire

Cheeseland is good. 

This is cheese land! I wish I can go there because the cow jump over the cheese moon. 

Right page: Text by Claire, illustrations by Big Bee

In space, you can see cheese planets like a cheese ball. Yummy!

Left page: Text written by Big Bee, illustrations by Claire

One day a cow went out to play but it was not night! The cow jumped over the sun!

Right page: Text by Claire, illustrations by Big Bee

But in the end the cow ate a bit of the sun. Yummy! 

Text by Claire, illustrations by Big Bee

And then, the cow's mouth began to get hotter and hotter. And then the cow cried. Wee wee wee.

In the end the cow spit out the cheese and lived happly ever after. 

The End. 

Back of the book: text by Claire, illustrated by Big Bee

About a wonderful Cheese Land. Non-coloured book (wonder what that means!?) Over 1 million copys (!!!) 

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

This June holidays, she brought back 2 half-written books that they are currently working on and mentioned that they will complete the books in the new school term. One is titled "The Pink Dolphin And Friends" and the other is "The Magic Doughnut". Any buyers for now? ;) 

Learning At Home: Green For Nature

I am trying very hard to teach colours to Little Bee, who had not grasped colour identification very well yet. Her default answer whenever I asked her "what colour is this?" would always be "blue!" spontaneously. If the object in question is not blue, I would frown and asked her to think harder, and she would then observe the object with a keener eye before uttering "yellow!" or "orange!" or "black!" (sometimes the wrong answer!).

So, the week before, I was teaching her the colour green. It was an easy colour to identify as I used real life elements like the ubiquitous trees and plants just outside our house as examples. She loves leaves and flowers, so it was pretty easy to let her associate green with omniscient Mother Nature. For breakfast, she ate fruit loops and I got her to identify and eat up the green loops first. We also read Dr Seuss' "Green Eggs And Ham" although she did not have the patience to finish the whole book. And we painted with green paint. 

Eat the green fruit loops first! 

A pleased Little Bee after drawing a green tree...or is it a balloon? 

We decided to create a small orchard of fruit trees - or rather, just 2 trees! An orange tree and an apple tree. I cut out the shapes of the fruits and trees, and she painstakingly pasted the fruits neatly onto the trees. For the orange tree, she had this queer obsession of sticking the oranges around the perimeter of the tree. As for the apple tree, she patiently drew the stalks of the apples herself, which were a tad too long, so the apples looked like cherries!

We then stuck the completed foliage onto used toilet rolls, and voila! Standing 3D fruit trees! She gave the apple tree to jie-jie who was so pleased with this unexpected present after school. 

Check out how she stuck the oranges all around the perimeter of the tree! 

The next few days, the theme was extended to letter recognition of T (for tree) and L (for leaf) where she neatly traced these letters. I am happy that her writing skills had improved considerably recently. 

I also introduced the theme of insects, more specifically, ants, as she was very interested in ants. So I dug out one old story book of Big Bee that talked about ants, and Little Bee was fascinated by this book for days, often taking it out to read herself and I would see her in a corner, counting the immense number of ants in the book! 

Big Bee also wanted to dabble with the ants theme, so we created a craftwork for older kids - an ant maze! She drew the maze with lots of adorable intricate details, and I drew the ant. And remember our primary school days when we used magnets to create moving objects? Well, I stuck a magnet underneath the ant, and another magnet underneath the maze, and voila! A magical moving ant crawling by itself, finding its way home! Big Bee was fascinated by this maze, although Little Bee was not that interested. 

Big Bee's ant maze with the magnetic moving ant

We wrapped up this theme with Hubby's suggestion to go to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden on a sweltering hot Sunday morning. We spent a couple of hours analysing all sorts of different plants like mosquito-repelling plants that Big Bee was amazed with (because she hates mozzies!), a gorgeous cherry tree (minus the famous blossoms) and even a quaint canopy of Chinese hu-lu plants! The girls had great fun, laughing - cheery and merry - running with their Papa across the lawns, meandering through the labyrinth, slithering down the slides. Great fun indeed!

 

Monsters Vs Aliens

The June holidays smashed into our halcyon days of rigid routine with a most welcoming breath of fresh, invigorating air, and the sweet promise of long, languid and unplanned days ahead. 

We celebrated the onset of these carefree days with a movie treat for the Bees last Sunday - Monsters vs Aliens. The girls were beside themselves with glee when we arrived at the cinema. Little Bee was jumping up and down, uttering "(Little Bee) watch show!". Big Bee was anticipating the popcorn with so much thrill that I am quite certain she only likes watching movies because of the popcorn! 

They shared a seat in the cinema, both comfortably ensconced in the lush seat with a popcorn bag between them, each extending an arm in perfect harmony into the bag to crunch at the delicious caramel delight. At her age, Big Bee was easily fixated by a compelling storyline, and she was hanging on to every word in the movie. As for Little Bee, I was just so thankful that she remained in her seat throughout the entire movie, not fearful of the dark unlike her first movie experience. In fact, she felt so comfortable that she fell asleep at the final 15 minutes of the movie!

Holistic Report Card...

...Yes, that was what Big Bee's primary school named their report book. However, when I flipped through the pages, only grades leaped out at me. Perhaps the "holistic" portion referred to the compulsory subjects of Social Studies, Art, Music, PE, etc? 

The month of June had flared its exuberant cranium into this year, indicating a halfway point for the year. Every day, I am constantly amazed at how fast time gallops past us. Every moment, every second is too precious to let go, especially as we get on in age. We want to savour with exquisite relish and encapsulate every droplet of happiness into a frozen moment of rapturous eternity. Yet, it is impossible. 

So, every week or month, I would conduct a silent reflection on past milestones and appreciate quietly all the little felicities in my life. 

I remembered the milestone of half a year ago, when Big Bee entered into a new threshold of her life. My trepidations, her consternations. My heartaches, her headaches (at all the homework!). My uncertainties, her inferiorities. 

Yet, the 6 months of strong teamwork in the family culminated in contentment for us. I am very happy with her academic progress. But more fundamentally, Big Bee had adjusted beautifully in school, she has found new best friends while maintaining strong ties with her old buddies, she eased into her new school life with confidence and stable emotions. 

She managed to attain satisfactory results - 98% for English, 96.5% for Maths and 94% for Chinese. The mean scores for all students in primary one are 86.9%, 90.8% and 86.6% respectively, so I think primary school is indeed competitive these days. 

But what made my heart glow was her form teacher's comments in the report card which indicated that she had adjusted well emotionally:

"(Big Bee) is a confident and self-assured child. She has done very well this term. She is enthusiastic and participated well in class discussions. She has shown herself to be dependable. She is very bright and has good leadership qualities."

This is but a miniscule step in her academic sojourn and an even more microscopic tiptoe in the bigger journey of life. Let's hope she emerges strong and happy!

With her family of teddy bears (a la our traditional paper dolls) and a little wardrobe of clothes for them. 

Buy Money

Little Bee understood the concept of buying or purchasing things when supplies are running low. For example, if there is not enough milk powder for her, she will say "No more milk? Buy Little Bee (sic) milk". Or if there is not enough coloured paper left for her craftwork, she will put on her signature lower lip pout and said,"No more paper (pout)? Buy paper."

So, this morning, the moment she woke up, she asked me...

Little Bee: "Mama work?"

Mummy: "Mama work(s) to earn money."

Little Bee: "No more money?"

Mummy: "No, just that Mama needs to work to earn some more money for jie jie and mei mei."

Little Bee: (pouted again) "No more money. Buy money? Buy more money (looked hopefully at me)."

I wish I can indeed "buy money", haha. 

Breakfast For Angel Faces

After a long hiatus, my good friend YM and I met up for breakfast on Monday morning with Little Bee and her adorable princess, Sophie. The mummies had a good time munching away on scrumptious breakfast sets - so did the little ones! 

Little Bee and Sophie were singing songs, and I am wondering if they would check out discos and parties together in future, just like what the mummies did (too) many years ago! They are the same height and I thought they look so cute standing and playing together. It was a pity that they could not play longer for I had to rush back and fetch Big Bee from school. In the cab going back, Little Bee was sad to part with her little friend, pouting out her lower lip in her signature pout and telling me, "No more friend". 

YM and I were pregnant with these 2 little girls at approximately the same time, and had many fun moments shopping for maternity and baby clothes. One moment our babies were ensconced comfortably inside our stomachs, and it seems like the next moment, they are growing out of their toddler stages, easing towards big-kidhood! Time really zooms faster than the speed of light and we should really appreciate and grasp every present moment rather than dwell unnecessarily in the past or present!   

On Stage

This morning, the whole family - Hubby, my mum, Little Bee and me - trooped to Big Bee's school for their primary one drama concert with the theme "Stories That Teach". I was really excited and bursting with anticipation as usual. 

We started preparing 2 weeks ago with my helper sewing innumerable brown feathers onto a light brown T-shirt for Big Bee's role as an emu in a zoo! Her class performed a short play called "Edwina the Emu", and Big Bee is Edwina the emu :) She was the main protagonist in this play and I was proud she can remember all those lines and rattled them off with ease in front of hundreds of people. I would have been rather nervous! 

Backstage in her simple emu costume with feathers plucked from an old-fashioned feather duster!

She was also chosen to be one of two comperes for the one-hour concert, and we were only informed about it last Thursday. As usual, I was the anxious parent, looking through the compere script and asking her to pronounce this word or that word. But she was cool and composed about it, and I was bursting with pride as I listened to her steady rendition of the script on stage.

 

A snapshot just before the show started, with her other compere partner

Saying their first few lines on stage, with their class waiting to start, on the right side of the stage

I am not sure what others thought of her performance, but to me as a parent, I thought she performed to perfection :)

More importantly, I thought all the girls performed beautifully. They resembled new spring flowers that are beginning to blossom - soft yet vibrant, shy yet valorous, nervous yet exhilarated that they are on stage, with hundreds of eyes on them. This is certainly a first step towards bigger things to come for them.  

 

Striking a pose with her pals and Little Bee, who was fussed over so endearingly by all the big jie-jies in Big Bee's class! 

Evening Landscapes

On evenings when the Bees are restless and overflowing with energy, I would take out our trustworthy and reliable poster paints and brushes, complete with a drawing board, and just let them expend their inexhaustible energies into painting. 

It does wonders in keeping them occupied, quiet and productive for almost an hour! Sometimes I will join in and give them ideas on what to draw (although usually they are not very good ideas!). At other times, they will just unleash their creativity and inner thoughts, and just paint to their hearts' content!  

Here was what we had done about a month back on a cosy evening after dinner.

"Rain and blossom" by Big Bee

"Two lone trees on a sunny day" by Big Bee

"Abstract red" by Little Bee

"A for apple" by Little Bee

 

Erm, "Strange juxtaposed weather of storm and sun" by Mummy. The Bees were bewildered by my painting...bad example! 

Solitary Afternoon

In the midst of all these warm and fuzzy mothering, I also had to rush to complete my very very long overdue dissertation. Which is almost impossible to finish if I am at home with the kids. By their bedtime, I am deadbeat and all I want to do is to chill out with Hubby, watching a home movie or something. 

Which is why this afternoon, I opted not to go for lunch with the family and the in-laws. So that I can have some time poring over those thick research and hitting the keyboard real hard. 

It is a stillness and tranquillity I had not experienced in my own home for a long long time - in bright daylight! Sitting at the desk in front of the window, ears tuned to the sounds of chirping birds hidden within the luxuriant leaves of the many overhanging trees, with the occasional jarring yet soothing rhythmic sounds of the grass cutting machine and feeling the gentle caress of the warm afternoon breeze on my face...it certainly is quite an afternoon delight! 

Sometimes, we just need to have some totally solitary me-time, not needing to talk aloud, just conversing silently with those thoughts in our minds. So rejuvenating!

Now, back to more academic drudgery again.... 

Perfect Moments Like These

Motherhood and constant fatigue are synonymous. So is motherhood and happiness. Having 2 kids with a large age gap between them (4.5 years between the Bees) gives a new dimension to juggling 2 completely different schedules with totally different activities between the Bees. 

When it is time for homework for Big Bee, Little Bee will demand that I leave Big Bee's desk to play with her. When it is dinner for Little Bee and I have to feed her, Big Bee will ask me why she has to follow her mei-mei to watch "silly Hi-5" (feeding Little Bee is usually done in front of a TV, unfortunately, as I could not waste precious time for her to self feed, unless Big Bee's in school!).

When it is time for Little Bee's afternoon nap, Big Bee will be just back from school and there will be utmost excitement between the 2 girls, overstimulating Little Bee who will then only sleep late in the afternoon! When it is bedtime for Big Bee, Little Bee would be active like a nocturnal hamster, having had a satisfying 2-hour afternoon nap. The polarised list goes on, stretching my day into a 19-hour marathon from 6am to 1am!

Yet, there are little moments that warm my heart. Moments like the Bees bathing together, cheering loudly when I ask "Who wants to bath together?!" And they would jump up and down excitedly, screaming "YESSSSSS!" in a super cheerleader way. Then they will have a contented (and quiet!) time playing with water harmoniously. 

Or these moments below which really infused contentment into my being. Big Bee teaching Little Bee how to write - in total patience, cheeriness and camaraderie. No yelling at each other for once. No sibling frustration, screams or tears. Just love, support and strong espirit de corps. 

Big Bee explaining the intricacies of writing "G" to Little Bee. Mind you, her instructions are way better than mine! Perhaps it is the generation gap...

Big Bee encouraging Little Bee with every stroke and every curl that she wrote, with Little Bee in full concentration.

If Little Bee writes correctly, there will be such a loud and warm sisterly cheer and applause from Big Bee! 

It is during moments like these that I think everything is just more than perfect. Simply wonderful. 

Family Portraits

Here are 2 family portraits drawn from the Bees' perspectives :) 

Drawn by Big Bee on a quiet and warm weekend afternoon on a new drawing block and she presented this proudly to me after drawing it :) 

Scribbled by Little Bee all of a sudden in her weekend school library. She first drew Papa and Jie Jie and told me who they are. I was pleasantly surprised and asked her to complete the family portrait with herself and me. I also like how she allocated different sizes to each of us :) 

Learning At Home: Animals Theme

Last week, Little Bee's homeschooling theme was on farm and zoo animals. She really loved this theme, as the output of her craft works were more fun to her than colours, numbers or alphabets! 

I dug up all the books I had on farms and zoos and read to her every morning and night. Until this week, when the theme is different, she was still asking for "cow book" or "farm book"! 

I taught her to make comical animal sounds. We sang all kinds of animal songs like "Old MacDonald's" and "We're going to the zoo". I had to do a fair amount of research into songs on zoo as I was not very familiar with any zoo song! 

We playacted as animals for music and movement - flapping our elbows like silly chickens, waving our arms like elephants' trunks, quacking away noisily like ducks and roaring ferociously like lions and tigers! But every so often, she would put on a scary grimacing face with 2 clawed hands and chased after me with a fearsome snarl, pretending to be a monster, which was her favourite "animal"!

I steered away from teaching her formal alphabets and numbers as I just wanted her to have a fantastic time last week. So, we made plenty of craftwork instead.

We created a cow mask, which she still plays with everyday till now! I cut out the cow's face from a paper plate, edged out the eyes and stuck on the ears. And she did everything else! From sticking black patches and nostrils onto the face, colouring the pink nose, scribbling some black hair and drawing a cynical-looking mouth! She loves it to bits and treats it as a prized possession now, telling everyone that she made it! I am just lacking an elastic band to tie it around her face. 

Who's the cow?

I drew a mock zoo as a matching game, getting her to stick matching animals onto the different zoo enclosures, learning casually about the spelling of Z-O-O, sticking the alphabets onto her mock zoo, and creating a mini Little Bee who walked about the zoo! And she kept insisting Z is "N"! I guess they looked a bit similar huh? 

1 and 2: Before she stuck on her matching animals and ZOO words

3 and 4: A zoo with pairs of animals, complete with a mini Little Bee!

We also did other craftwork like creating a chicken laying eggs using coloured paper and a black lamb with stuck-on cotton wool. In the end, she was so tickled with the concept of eggs coming from hens that she made me cut a dozen eggs for her to stick all around the hen! And whenever she sees a cow picture, she will proudly yell out "Milk from cow!!!" Hm, I think she had conveniently forgotten that milk comes from mummies too! 

Intense concentration when applying glue to an egg. Eventually, there were 8-9 eggs stuck around the base of the hen! 

She stuck on the different coloured parts of the hen by referring to the craftbook's picture herself, with just a little guidance from me.

Of course, this theme culminated with an inevitable trip to the zoo last weekend where we took along her mock zoo "map" for her to identify the animals in the real zoo!

With jie-jie just outside the zoo

I had fantastic fun planning for this theme! And we were so excited to share our work with Big Bee every time she was back from school :) 

Teacher For A Day

Big Bee's zany classmates!

This is a salute to all teachers, especially primary school teachers. I never knew teaching could be such a draining job until I became a parent volunteer for Big Bee's school yesterday. I reached home and lay flat on the bed after the event, delirious and worn out. I only managed to recover my flagging spirits somewhere around 5pm, but by 10.30pm, I was a lost soul again, having to ask Hubby to help me prepare Little Bee for bedtime and put her to bed. 

I had been a parent volunteer umpteen times in Big Bee's preschool, bringing small little kids out on field trips. Yet, those incidents never made me half as fatigued as yesterday! 

Big Bee's primary school has this wonderful day organised solely by parents, where we take over the entire primary school for one day, so that the teachers can all focus on consolidating their mid year exam results. All activities are planned painstakingly by parents. All child minding and "teaching" on that day are taken charge by mummies and daddies. 

I was being tasked to be a class chaperone, which means that I need to plan for games and activities to keep a class of 30 boisterous 7-year-old kids well entertained and suitably occupied for about 1.5 hour! Quite a challenge, I must say.

Hence, I spent a good part of this week researching for fun games to amuse the girls. Pressure came from Big Bee too. She was elated and excited that I will be her "class teacher" for one day, and kept anticipating for the day to arrive. She warned me to concoct really fun games so that her classmates will not think I am a boring teacher. For she told me they are very critical and brutally honest. This puts more stress on my planning. But she did help significantly by conducting a casual "poll" with her friends and suggesting to me what they would love to play. 

On that morning, she even "censored" my dressing, telling me not to wear "ugly clothes", in her words. *Faint* She finally agreed to a loose dress that I chose, but sadly, 2 of her friends asked her if her mummy is pregnant. Urgh!! 

There were 2 class chaperones - another mummy, G, and me. We decided through emails on the following games to entertain the kids:

1) Draw-a-girl relay game

2) Dance and freeze

3) Hot potato

4) Musical chairs

5) Duck duck goose (suggested by the majority of the girls in high spirits)

When we asked them if they would like to play games, everyone screamed and said "YESSS!!!" Their enthusiasm really spurred the 2 mummies on. 

Girls with so much energy and zest! 

However, as some of these games were competitive in nature, slowly, we saw the nastier and "kiasu" sides of some girls. One girl simply sat on the floor, motionless, pouting and made some kicking actions when we went to ask her what was wrong. I was rather shocked at her behaviour. Another group of girls sulked in a corner and refused to play any more games just because they had been eliminated in the musical chairs game. 

Yet, most of the time, the eliminated girls never failed to argue their case and persuaded us that they sat in the chair first, or was not the last one with the hot potato. My goodness! What happened to the meek, submissive pupils who were us many decades ago, when arguing back to a figure of authority is tantamount to immediate punishment!? 

Cheeky but delightful kiddos

Throughout the class activity session, G and I had to mediate fights between the girls, listened with sympathy and empathy when some girls said who-and-who scolded them for what-and-what, calmed down crying girls and tried to talk sense to the more domineering, stubborn ones. But everything was worth it when a little girl, Teri, walked to me and softly handed me an origami with some drawing on it, smiled to me and said, "Teacher, this is for you." I gave her a tight, thankful hug.

Wow! Now I know why teachers need to be firm and fierce! It really is a jungle of survival of the fittest in primary school! There was really so much group dynamics going on at such a young age! 

However, I am glad to notice that Big Bee was a very accommodating person, very giving and helpful. It warms my heart to see her so well-liked by many girls, both the domineering and the more subdued girls. 

That being said, I had fantastic fun, leading a group of 9 girls which include Big Bee, through a taxing race a la Amazing Race after the class activities, where we had to rush between different stations, overcoming different challenges and obstacles under the hot noon sun! 

Exhausted but happy girls after a highly challenging game "Alien Attack" where the whole group had to cross from point A to B with only 5 legs!

We were ALL elated when their class won the Amazing Race-like competition! To see Big Bee jumping high in mid air and screaming with joy with her classmates when their class was announced as the champions made my heart swell - seeing her imbued with a strong community spirit, knowing that she has a little world outside the warm cosmos in our home. 

With Elsie after they had been awarded the first prize! 

Yet, those pleased little glances and quiet proud looks when her friends milled around me, telling me "Aunty, this" and "Aunty, that" made me so glad I could spend lovely time like this with her in her social world. No matter how tired I felt, I guess I should be volunteering for this event every year :) 

Bedtime Antics

Little Bee was a true owl yesterday evening. She skipped her afternoon nap, and at bedtime, still refused to sleep. She was chatting non-stop like a little monkey as jie-jie was snoozing off to Sleepy Land. 

These days, she was suddenly confused by the concept of "me" and "you", a common mistake that had Big Bee in disorientation when she was a toddler too. So, on her bed, this conversation went on at bedtime in hushed tones, for fear of waking Big Bee up.

Little Bee: "Bao bao you". 

Me: "No, it is bao bao 'me'!" 

A long suspicious look...

And then, Little Bee: "NO, bao bao you!" in a more forceful tone and big round eyes.

Me: "Bao bao me!" and pointed to her nose, indicating "me" is Little Bee

Little Bee (breaking into a cheeky beam): "You, me, you, me, you, me!!" 

I gawked at her, speechless. 

Little Bee then told me "I want read book!" I nearly fainted. Telling her no resulted in a long, hurt look with big watery eyes, followed by a torrential pouring of tears and loud wailing of disappointment. 

Afraid of waking Big Bee up from her sweet slumber, I quickly hoisted up a highly distressed Little Bee to the living room. It is really hard to enforce discipline at bedtime, not minding her loud cries, when you have 2 kids sleeping in one room. Now, Little Bee will think she had won the battle by crying, and this will be her tactic moving forward, I am certain of that! 

Her cries and tears came to an immediate halt right outside the bedroom door. Hmmmm....

Then, on the sofa, here was what I asked her:

Me: "What book do you want to read?"

Little Bee: "Farm book. Cow!" (Last week, I was reading an assortment of farm and zoo books to her because her homeschooling theme was on farm and zoo animals, and she loved them)

Me: "Oh, they are in jie-jie's room and jie-jie is sleeping now, so we cannot take them!"

Little Bee frowned and shot me a helpless look with a lost-sounding "huh??"

Little Bee: "I want fat stomach book!"

My turn to show her a hapless, lost look. "Huh? Fat stomach book?"

Little Bee (large grin on her face now, rubbing her stomach and indicating a big bulge): "Yeah, fat stomach Mama!"

Realisation dawned on me. 

Me: "Ohhhhh, you want the book with Mummy having a baby inside?"

Little Bee: "YEAH!!!!" 

We had been reading this book (see below) last week and it created a deep impression on Little Bee when I told her about how a baby lives inside Mummy's stomach, and how she and jie-jie used to live inside my stomach too. So, whenever I read the book and asked her, "What's inside Mummy's stomach in the book?", she will reply, "Baby!!!" And I will ask her, "Did Little Bee used to live inside Mummy's stomach too?" And she will pat my stomach and replied, "Yeah! Little Bee (sic) sleeping there!"

No - I am not pregnant again! :)

I bought this book to prepare Big Bee for a little sibling when she was 4 years old, in a bid to explain to her why Mummy's stomach was inflating that time. She loved it then. 

This is a delightful book in a perfect size for bedtime reading with attractive illustrations of everyday situations that will appeal to little readers and the appropriate amount of words. 

A Day Of Happiness And Joy!

The day that my family and I had been waiting for has finally arrived! My one and only younger brother is getting married! And I thought I would never see this day, after seeing him wade through the oceans of so many trials and tribulations. 

The celebration started the eve before the wedding, as per our family tradition, with my mum's sisters and brothers, together with my cousins and hence, the Bees' cousins, gathering at my mum's house, absorbing the pre-wedding day excitement and anticipation. The cousins (young and older!) had great fun bonding together as usual!

The troupe of cousins having a blast: (from left) Big Bee, Chloe, Little Bee and Val. 

The following morning, I dressed the Bees up enthusiastically - Big Bee in her long, white wedding-like dress and Little Bee in a long, red frilly halter dress. We then set forth to my mum's house to welcome the bridal party and the tea ceremony.

While waiting, I had such wonderful time catching up and chatting with my uncles, aunts and cousins from both sides of the family. Family ties are very important in my family and I had grown up with close bonds with most of my cousins.

 

Tada!! The arrival of the gorgeous bride and groom, together with their entire wedding party! 

My brother and sister-in-law looked radiant and positively beaming with pure beatitude. My sister-in-law glowed with happiness and looked so beautiful in her bridal dress and "kua". 

There was a touching moment when my sister-in-law shed tears as my mum presented her with the "four pieces of gold" in Teochew tradition. The entire family just stared on in moved silence. 

I guess in Chinese tradition, there is little or no privacy during festive events like this! Relatives were opening the door to the bridal chamber at all times, or milling outside their bedroom door, gawking at the bride and groom unashamedly. :)

Mum, Dad and the newly weds for the tea ceremony

Little Bee's turn to "serve" jiu-jiu virtual tea and to get her ang pow from the couple! 

Big Bee and Jiu-Ma in her beautiful Chinese tradition costume "kua"

We had a slight reprieve in the afternoon where we rested for a little while before dressing up and headed towards Orchard Parade Hotel for the wedding dinner. The Bees were decked to the nines with Big Bee in a enthralling red and white dress with a sash and rose petals in the chiffon layers of her dress. Little Bee wore a similar (but shorter) dress, in pretty pink and with similar red rose petals sprinkled in the loose layers of the dress. 

Big Bee told me, "Mummy, the funnest part of dinners is dressing up. I looooovvve to dress up in beautiful dresses!" And Little Bee kept telling me, "I want wear nice nice!" Goodness, the stress of having 2 vain little girls! 

Little Bee had a terrible two moment, just before leaving the house, by deciding adamantly on wearing her weekend sandals with her dinner dress! Throughout the entire dinner, we could not sway her mind away from her sandals, which she claimed fervently to me, "Nice nice shoes!!!" with a pout. 

Stage entertainment for the night :)

Hubby and I were the emcees for the wedding and I had written a script with some sisterly tidbits of information that I hope would add a bit more meaning to the wedding. Hence, I was really super excited the entire day! However, on hindsight, I really enjoyed hosting my brother's wedding :) 

Cake cutting - happiness forever! 

The wedding dinner buzz was intoxicating, with so many extended family members whom I had not seen in a long time. Hubby and I were on stage most of the time at the start of the dinner. It was so fulfilling to see the fruition of all my brother's and sister-in-law's planning, and everything flowed with perfect precision and glorious emotions.

Dramatic entrance in the bride's dazzling evening gown with the stunning head piece!

Confetti galore! 

My brother gave a stirring speech, thanking almost everyone in his life and making my mum cry (again!). Not just my mum cried, but also some of our aunties in the dinner! Wedding speeches are indeed emotive and heart-rending. 

Mum dabbing tears of joy

My sister-in-law read him a beautiful poem about love - with tears trickling from her eyes and voice quivering. We were all entranced by this poignant display of unabashed love. 

Looking at them reaffirms my belief that love can indeed transcend everything - race, religion and many other barriers. Theirs is a love with much challenges from the beginning, and it certainly fills my heart, knowing that they are now united in a marriage made in heaven :) 

A phrase that my brother told me in their early days together is indelible from my mind. He told me then, "I had never felt so happy with any one before!" And with her, he smiles more, laughs more. This is the true repercussion of love! 

PS: Living in this era of digital photography is mind-boggling. Every significant moment (like tea ceremony, entrance of couple, etc) was captured by a plethora of different digital cameras by all the wedding guests, so unlike my time! Hence, it was fantastic to see photo angles from different guests and different perspectives. Thanks to all my cousins for taking many photos and posting them on their blogs and Facebook!

And a special thanks to my cousin Tan Zexun whose photographs are featured in this blog entry. He makes a wonderful photographer! You can see more of his photos on the wedding in his blog here. 

And you can see Candice's blog on the wedding here as well :) 

Thanks cuzzies!