The littlest munchkin who was up to no good at Ah Ma's house. A little rambling entry of how the 4 were turning out...
The littlest one: Small in size but big in personality. Chilli Padi personified. A WILD CARD. stubborn, strong-willed, someone who knew her mind, who went all out to get what she wanted...
She was a problem solver, this sly little one. Very endearing (we often had random ah gongs and ah mas waving to her on the streets), had ah gong, ah ma and papa twisted around her little finger...
she oozed charm with her doleful eyes and sweet temperament...usually quite quiet, very curious and alert, knew who to curry favour with by letting them hug and snuggle with her...
Currently, she was addicted to Cocomelon videos and watched them for quite some time every day (when she could not sleep at night, she would sit beside papa in the study and watched the videos... such sweet companionship). She and Jun could finish one portion of the teriyaki rice (ah, our favourite food from Hillion Mall Food Court) and she would even finish the chawanmushi all by herself too...
She loved to purse her lips - that classic rouge look that was very unattractive... She loved to imitate the bigger ones, loved pretty things and especially loved trying on shoes...hahaha... the rash one loved to get into trouble for she loved to climb up and down...she was really naughty (during the staycation we had at Andaz Hotel, she climbed up the stool and turned on the tap by herself to play with the water. gosh...)
One wondered how the littlest one rolled over Jun and came to be in the centre...ah...Tong was forever tucking his feet under Jun and rolling all the way to Jun's space, and they would all leave me with a sliver of space to sleep in at the edge of the bed...sometimes, I even slept at the bottom where the bed rail guard was...gosh...
Jun - miraculously, he was able to pronounce J and G sounds clearly now! He could say Jie jie (not Bear Bear), Ge Ge (not bor bor), You You (not wu wu)...so things were looking up and we decided not to schedule for the tongue tie cutting operation.
Jun loved to do mazes. He said he only had two friends at school and both of them were girls. One was called Gianna...one of the first G words he managed to pronounce really well..
Tong Tong - Well...his P2 form teacher stated that "
Isaac is a very inquisitive and responsible child. He is dependable and can be trusted to do whatever tasks he was given. He may come across as talkative but he usually gives very constructive comments. He is now more aware of his behaviour and he will raise his hands before talking as compared to the beginning of last term. Academically, he is strong in both Maths and English so he should continue with his good work. If there is one thing he should improve, it would be his handwriting.This is usually how he lost his markseh... "may come across as talkative"..what euphemism for "he talks non-stop, what an annoying chatterbox". Tong could be obnoxiously loud at times (he often talked at a shouting volume, like even when he was talking to er yi...)..
He was an endearing boy. He called papa at 7pm every day to ask if he was coming home. He called Er Yi every night to say good night. He was the one who often thought of calling others...
He had expensive taste in food. He loved lobsters, ribs, crabs and meat. He had a liking for extravagance too. One day, he talked about how MBS was one of the best hotels in Singapore and how he hoped he could stay there for one night. Ha...well he enjoyed the staycation (a very expensive affair, - ^600 for two rooms and one nigt)
Well Tong had cocky confidence in his ability..he claimed that he was very good at sports and all the teachers wanted him to join their CCA after the tryouts...
well...if he could be more humble and Jie be more confident...that would be perfect.
Ha, the littlest one with two pony tails... she was getting all grown up, no longer the chubby baby
Ah... You You at Wai po's house again
Ah.. mei mei was willing to sit in the car seat as she got to watch cocomelon...She would make her "eh eh eh" noise incessantly and point to the tv screen until papa played the videos
Staycation at Andaz
At the cafe on the rooftop
Big King size bed
Took photos so that we could have inspiration for our renovation next year (ah, an exciting project)
The littlest one was a rather helpful child. She would bring my spectacles to me every morning, switched off the fan when she woke up from her nap, bring my shoes to me when we went out and even carried things for me! She also knew how to wear her own shoes ...such an independent spirit
This was supposed to look like a dumb bell. Haha Jun constructed it for her.
Jie Jie! Not Mei Mei.
"I am bringing my toy to Waipo's house!"
Ah Gong and me...
She even pouted in her sleep.
Look at that kiam pa face. Wanted a photo of her and she was not in the least bit interested and gave that "please...just move on" look
What was up with the index finger pose?
jie jie: Jie jie did funny things, like saying thanks to Siri...she had great ambitions - she wanted to be an MP, serve in the NS...well she used to want to work part time and spend more time with her brood.. but one fine day, she said that since she was endowed with better than average intelligence, perhaps she should serve the society to benefit more people...ah...such maturity...
well...when her cousins came over, they made a mess and she was indignant that she had to clean up a mess that she did not make...mama pointedly reminded her that she said she wanted to serve the public...so if she could not even serve her own family, how could she have the compassion and love to serve people whom she did not even know...
Jie was a very teachable girl. She was excellence-driven and always keen to improve. She delighted in doing well, not just well, she relished in doing stellar, stupendous, spectacular work. Did I write somewhere that she scored almost full marks for the interview of Uncle Brian?
And yet because she was such a motivated worker, I worried that she pushed herself too excessively and she would grow up to be an anxious, neurotic, insecure person who stuck to the safe and tried route for fear of failing..Jie jie...perfect love cast out fear. God's perfect love cast out fear...
Ah...jie was immensely honoured and proud that Mr Yap had chosen her to share about the GEP program with the P3 kids...
Ah...we went to Times Zone...eh...forgot what we were celebrating..perhaps Jie's good results...maybe Children's Day? We always had an excuse for a celebration, ah, we had fun like this, we enjoyed life...
Ah...Mei knew the concept of starting the game by tapping the card on the scanner! Gave her one without any value and she went to every scanner to try...ha...copying her brothers and having a go at fishing...
One day, she was so tired that she fell asleep on the floor. It was hilarious. Luckily, the littlest one loved to sit in the pram and we had been out most of the time in the pram! Very different from my experiences with the other three. A lucky break for me. My poor back, I did not think I could baby-wear her for long without breaking my back..
Oh.. a sad episode...my wai gong passed away and I missed seeing him by a narrow margin of 10 minutes...He lived a long good life, he had so many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren... I was more saddened by the inevitability of death and passing of time...
Ah a juxtaposition of the two girls who both liked sparkly shoes...
Ha, with her buddy who lived on the third storey...
Heh, she liked to take her baby out with her. This baby gave the older ones the creeps, papa had to remove the battery so the baby would not emit creepy laughter and cries.. hahah
Ah, we went to Jewel Changi Experience after checking out from Andaz. Iphone did funny things to the timeline of the photos...they NEVER came out in the correct chronological order. I used to reorder EVERY THING...well, i had given up. You see, mama had evolved...eh? like a pokemon? Mama had also learnt to let go of things out of her control...it would take too long to reorder the photos...so I would just follow whatever sequence the phone had listed the photos in and write a rambling account..
talking about living together as siblings...whenever tong and xun squabbled, i would exclaim that it was great that they had siblings of the opposite gender so that they would know exactly how it was like to be married...to which Tong retorted that he WOULD NEVER get married then, let us see.. .ha
I thought the two boys looked quite alike heh!
Well...finally the last of the photos...time to hit the hay...
Ah... Word of the year...I almost forgot about that...I had this sudden brainwave..
Xun - Sympathise: I hoped she would develop a more sympathetic nature and take initiative to help out more at home
Tong - Serve: Tong liked to argue when he felt he suffered injustice...however he was only sensitive to the injustice he suffered and he did not think about the things he did unfairly...he often complained about how jie treated hi, how papa scolded him harshly while being culpable of the exact things he hated...so... mama wanted him to learn to serve others, to put others' needs before his
Jun - Strong: Jun liked to whine, Jun often whinged that he was incapable of doing a lot of things.. that was not true at all...so we were encouraging him to try to be more independent and hope that he would find out that he was more capable than he thought
Mei - Submit: ya coz she was a WILD CARD and needed to learn how to listen to instructions and obey her parents.. hahahah
Papa - Soften: He thought it sounded like he was a softener...but we hoped that he would be kinder
Mama - initially Sparkle: being the saint that I already was, the initial word was sparkle...or shine...or some frivolous word with no actual implementation plan involved...
Eh...later mama changed it to "secure" or "sound mind", I could not recall...because I was going through a season of insecurity (the longer I taught English, the more I felt my English was really bad and that my students' parents would find out that I was a fraud someday...well the reality was because I was quite proficient at it, I was even more acutely aware of what I did not know...perhaps the smart people's conundrum?) Well...mama hoped for a sound and secure mind.. one that was focused on God...
Covid - the pandemic would not go away any time soon, so we would not be travelling overseas in the near future...well, we were praying for better days to come...every one was used to wearing masks and scanning their particulars for Safeentry and tracking wherever we went...humans were amazingly adaptable creatures.. what was once foreign and chafing had become the new normal...
I just hoped that we could gather in bigger groups soon (currently 5, 8 in nov...ah dashed hopes for our annual Christmas gathering at Marzuki..) eh...well..hopefully we could meet up with more people during CNY!
Daddy God, your will be done, your kingdom come...we knew everything is in your big hands...
