Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

MACAU!

i wsa just awakened by the wonderful news that we are going to macau today to spend the night at the westin family resort.

i am very thrilled.

all the family is going, and why not. it is mother's day, not couple's day.

in going, sela and jasper will have to miss radhika's birthday party tomorrow. i explained this news to them and they reacted with rather stony faces, and i think a "hmmpn!" from sela. jasper was preoccupied with spinning around and looking at himself in the full length mirror. i promised to make them both party bags and they were appeased.

dale and stephanie are going as well and steph and i have spa appointments today at 4.

it's a great gift. i am very pleased with my thoughtful husband. and children.

it is the night before mother's day and all is well in our world.

mother's day celebrations have started early. thursday, jasper and sela presented to me chocolate chip cookies they had made for me. friday afternoon, after i returned from tromping around wanchai markets with dresses, shoes, socks and a few other items for the household, carys presented me with a small cupcake that had "carys" written on it, and then a much larger, much more ornately decorated one that said "mummy".

there was also a card, that featured a photo of carys stirring what i presume to be cupcake batter, and the words, "i love you mummy because "you buy me beautiful dresses". and amazingly, just that day i had bought a dress for my little blue eyed girl.

last night charles and i went out for dinner with dale and stephanie, then later the boys went out and stephanie and i went for foot massages. oh, it was dreamy. the fellow was very abusive with my feet, but he did a great job.

there were a few years where mother's day was extremely painful for me. years where mothers stood up in church and i stayed seated, red in the face and wishing it was me, rising, smoothing skirts, holding a child, or hand on swelling stomach.

tomorrow is going to be a very painful time for someone. their pain may be pubic, or private.  please, take a moment to send an email, to call, to take someone aside and let them know you are thinking of them. that you know this day is an especially difficult one. you're smart enough not to mention "relax" "just" "if you had more faith" and other such platitudes. you don't have to be a close friend to reach out to them. if you fear of embarassment, then send an email. infertility is so isolating, it is such a relief when someone reaches out to you. whether it is to say, "i don't understand, but i am so sorry." or "i am thinking of you today" . 

on a day meant for mothers, i hope you have the opportunity to reach out to a woman who is yearning to be a mother, but is not yet.

Messers tai chi and mahjong are a bit like your boyfriends single rugger pals. rugger boys have no desire to have a girlfriend, but are thrilled and compliment you no end when you prepare them massive fry-ups following a long game. dedicated bachelors, they, with heartbreaking smiles, bring you sewing, ironing, always complimenting you while they empty out your fridge. "careful with the ham, that's charles' dinner you're eating."

"lucky charles!"

taichi and mahjong aren't eating me out of house and home, although their output suggests there is definite input..but they are disconcerting. and everywhere. i go into the kitchen and flick on the light, and innocently head towards the chocolate.

and suddently there is a flurry of motion. i only see this out of the corner of my eye, and i jump. because, just like there are endearing rugger friends, there are also those leech like friends that you despise. in my case, they're not potential leeches, they're cockroaches. and the fear of having to wake magnificent, my poor hardworking magnificent, to breathe in cockroachbegone fumes, and to kill the little hard shelled things, makes me very sad. and it is very hot at night in hong kong right now, and i am cool and showered by this point, and the sighting and panic makes me sweat a little bit.

theyre just around all the time.

but they're very cute. mr taichi is very pale. he needs feeding up. mr mahjong, who spends a lot of time by the sink, (cleanliness next to Godliness, etc) is thicker and a bit pinker. he must be getting all the mossies.

i'm on an increase of va!pro ates ...it's an interesting time in my life. probably more interesting for those around me!!! i wish i knew when i was being a cow.

moo-re later.

multitasking is not so easy on the computer

(names have been protected to protect the innocent)

i made a mammoth error on the computer today. i was talking on the phone, and carrying on an msn chat to three people. one chat had two people.

the second chat had one person.

chat one was longer.

i am good enough friends with person two that i can leave the conversation abruptly, and it wasn't like she was being overly attentive to the chat, so after asking, "are you there?" once, i went back to our original topic and summarised before signing off, "i think they should break up". young love is so exciting.

and then i got back to my phone conversation.

an hour or so later i went back to my computer and saw the train wreck that i had left behind me.

person number two was fine except for a very polite WTF by my "he's giving space but showing love/support" ... and a reminder of how emotionally distant he can be.

however i had written on person number one's chat "i think they should break up". not so pleasant for person one to hear. especially since the above lines were counselling of the exact opposite sort.

it is a stupid enough error that happens often enough in the computer age, but how hurtful is it? it has happened to me a couple of times, and it makes me feel very very bad.

it's not like i wanted not to pay attention, i just got confused. i was listening to everyone, but i got overwhelmed for a minute.

so now i get to start with the apologies. and the internet as an excuse is so trite. bla.

today i miss the days when fax machines were the newest coolest forms of communication.

so it has come to this

you think you know your husband.

you talk with your girlfriends, listen to them list their husbands shortcomings or little habits and you say, "oh, mine would never do that, he's too busy doing this..." and you are confident in your answer.

i was pretty confident too, until the other day, when was checking through old sites, and i found a carefully concealed one.

stands and mounts

stands and mounts

stands and mounts?

i didn't click on it, i couldn't, because my hands were paralysed while my brain raced along pounding thoughts into my heart. i waited for emotion to come through me, "here i am, a statistic, my husband surfing porn sites...how do i feel? how am i going to handle this? will i tell anyone? should he be ashamed? does this mean i have been a bad wife? not as "active" as i should have been? "

thoughts flowed through my veins, where emotions didn't go and where blood was pumping freely.

apparently surfing for porn is a very common thing, but i never imagined my husband would do it. surfing for ways that you can hide junk so your wife can't hide it, ordering new shirts with cool Biblical sayings on them, that's his sort of thing...and while the man has a libido, i didn't think porn was his thing.

yet here was stands and mounts telling me that quite obviously, it was.

i decided insulting him was a better way to go. if i was going to start feeling emotion (guilt had already struck) i would insult him. who on earth would visit a place called stands and mounts. surely there were better, classier sites than that?

and finally, my fingers unclenched themselves and i got enough heat in them to coordinate the mouse and move them. to click on the site.

i shut my eyes, again cursing myself for not getting net nanny and wondering if this is why charles hadn't wanted to get net nanny.

and opened my eyes, and found myself looking at six wooden television stands.

yes, www.standsandmounts.com is a site for television stands.

of course, then i got furious. i am trying to downsize the junk in our house and he is trying to bring more in? does he not listen to me at all?

it wasn't a porn site !!!!!

junked and joyfilled

we spent today on our friend's sheri and mike's junk.

the weater was perfect, no one is seriously burnt although we are all sun kissed. (at left, jj poses with miss gail from small world.)

we headed out to soko islands, the southwestern most islands of hong kong's 262 islands. the islands surrounding are owned by china.

we tossed out the anchor, and everyone put on their bathers, and swam to the shore. we made the kids eat a sandwich (pb of course) before leaving the boat. they loved being in the water. charles made a boat. (at left, the junk in the background, seb and a new friend tubing, jj and the boston whaler captain in the foreground.)

at one point, jasper pushed in pierre (no worries, he is an excellent swimmer, his brother would have been on the south african olympic team if they were not residents of hong kong during his swimming years), and because he was so close to the edge, the movement caused him to fall in as well. (pierre had encouraged jasper to push him in). he went splashing into the water, and under. an armband slipped off (oh am i so glad i insisted on those bloody armbands). pierre saw what was happening, and as jasper was surfacing, he pulled him up. that was the drama for the day. (close up of seb and his new friend having a fun time tubing.)

the kids all went in the motorboat and were pulled in innertubes, oh they had fun. (at left, carys & sela talk to each other while tubing at a relatively quick speed! jasper in the foreground.)

but oh they were loud on the boat. after lunch, when most of us were surrenduring to the waves relaxing slap against the side of the boat and it's rocking rhythm, only carys fell asleep, while jasper and sela and seb played around. oh they were loud. really really loud it seemed. are other people's kids this loud? were mine a problem? was everyone criticising my parenting skills? hard to say. thankfully, i didn't spend a lot of time guessing on that topic, i was too busy eating, talking and laughing. it was a great day. i used to hate junk trips, on a boat all day and you never knew if you were going to get trapped by boring business associates who got even worse when under the influence...but these days, junks are great. we love them. LOVE THEM LOVE THEM LOVE THEM.

here are some pictures courtesy of magnificent. he is very tired, this is a very nice thing for him to do. (carys & sela wave to their adoring fans aboard the junk!)

we had slid back into complacency.

this morning when i looked at the calendar and realised jasper had a doctor's appointment, i actually rolled my eyes, instead of feeling icewater drift into titanic sized worries around my stomach. there was no nausea.

jasper even cracked the 45th percentile (asian) for height and weight. i was ecstatic. even looking forward to the day when there would be no more appointments.

and then we saw the doctor.

he asked jasper a few questions. and then he looked up at me and asked me many more.

1. did jasper run here

2. was he running in the waiting room

my answers were no and no. i wanted to say:

1. no, the waiting times are so long we could have crawled and still had time for a coffee afterwards

2. no, it is called the waiting room, not the running room. the running room is a shop.

but, i didn;t want to get "glib" so i stuck to just the facts, maam. and besides, i didn't want to interfere in the quality of my kids healthcare. but then the bad news started. jasper has a wheeze. how often does he have a cough? at least five days a month? yes? does he cough in the middle of the night? yes? doesn't matter if water can appease the cough...he does have a cough? and asthma runs in the family? he was the heaviest preemie? i see.

this is when i start to want to make comments about ITS ALL THERE IN THE FILE. but given that the file is taller than me, i didn't want to alienate the doctor. if he had read the entire file, we would still be in the waiting room.

jasper's lungs are in trouble. we're back on steroids 200 micrograms twice a day, and ventolin six times a day (two puffs at a go). the steroids have all sorts of long term side effects.

the irony is, the doctor told me that jaspers physical activities must be severely curtailed or else we are in danger of harming his lungs or passageways. (i am still uncertain as to what the technical term is). i have to admit, this part makes me laugh. what else would jasper like more than to have his physical activities curtailed? the doctor even cautioned me that jasper might even have learned to hide or fake his symptoms.

we walked home (slowly) and then jasper ran to the bathroom to do wees. he slipped and he hit his head, cutting open his face right below his eyebrow, so close to his eye.

he cried and cried and cried. wheezed and wheezed and wheezed.

there's nothing like kids for keeping you hygenically honest.

let me clarify: when it comes to them i am a firm believer in building resistance. when our cats (RIP) were alive, the cats licked the kids faces, and i caught sebastian drinking out of the cats water bowl a few times, and all four kids sampled cat food at one time or another. and generously, the kids would giggling, offer olivia a few licks of their tomato ketchup coated chips which she would accept. i have no problems with scooping food off the floor and popping it back on to the kids plates or straightways into their cavernous gobs, depending on the situation. the three, five and probably no longer than 10 minutes rule is a big one in our house.

but back to hygiene. except during the nicu period, when i began to get excema between my fingers because of the constant washing with carbolic soap and NO lovely moisturiser, have i ever washed my hands as much as i do now. every time i accompany one of the beasts of burden to the bathroom, i have to set a good example, or else they scream at me, "wash your hands mummy, use soap!" if i try to remind them that i didn't use the toilet or wipe the arse of anyone who did, i am shrilly informed,  "there's germs on the handles!" wash wash wash. so i wash when i use the toilet, or whenever i accompany one of them to the toilet. hassle!

today is sunday. we had a good weekend. a highlight for me was that today after lunch (goat's cheese salad on rye toast, balsamic dressing), pizza for the sultans of swing, eggs benny for charles), charles and sebastian took a run together. can you fathom it, a RUN. i mean really.

sebastian's self confidence needs this. we are always telling him he is a good runner, and while he is fair to middling at team sports, when it comes to running he is like charles, very good with the potential to be very very good. charles hates team sports, and never does them with sebastian, and they needed to do a guy thing together. and so they went for a run, and apparently sebastian jogged for about 1.5 kilometres before needing a break. i tried to take a picture of them running together, but sebastian was wayyyy infront and i was using the close up.

jasper and i watched them go, and jude looked up at me and said, "i don't have to run, do i mummy?" and i replied, "not today." he then came inside and i read him a dora the explorer book. and soon, but not too soon, my big boys returned, demanding cold drinks and claiming high fives.

a different today

yesterday was "a different today" for the kids.

andrea and i were both at loose ends, and on a whim, we decided to go to the boat club with the kids for a swim and dinner.

i strongly dislike swimming when there is a cold wind. i dislike that my kids are unable to understand what "no running around the pool" means regardless of what level voice range i use to instruct them of this command and whatever tone the command is delivered in.

but, the look on their little dirt smudged faces when i informed them that we were doing something unexpected, made my day extraordinary.

i admit, in my hurry to get out of the flat i forgot sebastian's earplug's (honestly) and my swimming cossie (accidentally on purpose). so only sebastian was able to go into the big deep pool, but he and adam has a great time, even if seb wasn't diving under the water a lot. and the younger three raced around and around the pool, playing and having the greatest time. oh it did my heart good. andrea and i sat back and smiled at each other and tried to get in six sentences before one of the seven came up to us with a crisis.

after swimming, we let sebastian and adam go into the men's changing room alone, and the boys decided to have a spa date or something. come on..they're six! how long does it take to get changed and showered! i of course, had no intention of showering my kids, figuring 10 seconds under the spigot by the pool should suffice for an evening bath. jasper, who is into equality or hygiene (not sure which) on wednesday evenings, thought this most unfair and started crying and was so upset he had to take off his socks. andrea got so upset with the boys (after 25 minutes) that she walked into the men's washroom to tell them a few plain facts. love andrea. they joined us, their hair combed and perfect, three minutes later.

i taught the girls about blow drying their hair yesterday. they were very pleased.

my wretched children told me they wanted fried rice, spaghetti, spaghetti, and spaghetti for dinner last night. i offered them pizza but no no no, they wanted fried rice, spaghetti, spaghetti and spaghetti. so why the flying fart when the pizza arrived for adam, ashleigh and ella, did my four start wailing? how annoying are they? andrea and i tried to finish our conversation.

on the way home, andrea took us all in her vehicle, further enchantment for the kids. sebastian and carys, who were, to quote carys, "smooshy" together in the back seat, fell asleep on the 10 minute trip home, while jasper and sela enjoyed ashleigh and adam singing vertigo. daddy chad is a big time U2 fan and has taught his kids the words to all the u2 songs.

it was, to quote sela, "a different today". the kids were thrilled. i think we might do it again next week, IF homework is done. i must be insane. after the kids were in bed, andrea and i went for a walk and finished our conversation.

it is a delightful time of night - right before i am to click my light off and the kids have been silent for a few hours. i have just been in their rooms, picked up spongebob and popped him back on the bed, re-arranged jasper's arms around baby batman, smoothed carys' hair off her face.

i got a taste of the future today...sebastian unrolled a large cardboard oval shaped item which could only be an easter egg of some sorts, and said, "guess what this is, mummy. guess what i have painted on the side of the paper that is facing me."

"hmm.." i said. "i guess a light saber?"

he was delighted with that thought and laughed no. ditto was his response to my suggestions that the drawing was a self portrait, a picture of canada, a suprewi or special blanket.

NO! insisted my little man. "look now! it is an easter egg!"

"well done!" i praised, "I love the bright colours! would you like to come here and tell me about the egg?"

and sebastian said no.

normally, only the television or a overwhelming urge to do a poo would prevent him from nuzzling next to me and telling me about the painting. he had initiated the conversation, he was in "the talking mode".

my days of holding and hugging my little boy, are they drawing to a close? will i be left groping mr mahjong in the pantry, desperate for some sort of maternal contact with little men? and where is mr taichi anyways. great, now i have abandonment issues as well.