Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

whether we're stuffing krispy kreme's into our faces or not taking the oprah and health department recommended 10,000 steps a day - we take our bodies forgranted. drinking, breathing, walking, moving your fingers...they are all wonderfully complex actions.

when i see my children at gymnastics, i am always reminded of their nicu days, and how far they have run, jumped and climbed from those early predictions. hearing issues and mild cp be ding dong double damned, my children are living normal lives. we are so blessed by God and we are so grateful.

not all children are so lucky. i received an email the other day from a fellow blogger, joe schmidt. his cousins son has OI, also known as brittle bone disease, which affects 20,000 americans. Osteogenesis Imperfecta..."

...literally means "bone that is imperfectly made from the beginning of life." OI is a genetic disorder of type 1 collagen-- the protein "scaffolding" of bone and other connective tissues. People with OI have a faulty gene that instructs their bodies to make either too little type 1 collagen or a poor quality type 1 collagen. The result is that bones break easily.

today he is blogging about OI and his goal is to raise money and awareness for the OI foundation. drop by his blog. you are not obligated to donate any money, and learning about this disease is extremely enlightening. read. learn.

http://www.joeschmidt.com/blogathon

http://www.oif.org/blogathon

thank you for taking the time to make a difference joe, good luck.

friday is myday x 3

without a doubt friday is the triplets favourite day of the week. we start talking about fridays on monday.

what makes fridays so divine? playschool in the morning. oh how important they feel, being able to announce to their uniform clad older friends "i go school". if you are jasper you say, "thcool" but you know what he is saying, mainly because he repeats himself five or six times until you say, "yes, jasper, you do go to school". and then he nods, satisfied. "yeth".

so playschool. exercises, snack at a tiny table, cantonese stories, counting, playing...oh the excitement. the playschool is perfect for the triplets in that they aren't the focus of attention at the school. their great friends charlie and tallinn are there, and charlie and tallinn live in our building and are blonde and caucasian as well. there are two chinese kids in the class, and they have no idea of triplets, they just know there is a blonde infusion into their classroom, which amuses them to no end.

so, playschool. very grownup, very entertaining.

but after playschool, and after lunch, and after naptime is

gymnastics.

saying the world gymnastics sends the triplets into the throes of excitement. the word is pronounced anywhere from 'nastics! to gynsticnastic! always always with an exclamation mark at the end. gymnasics, the BEES KNEES. the final word. the perfect way to end their work week.

gymnastics. i love going, it makes me so happy to see my kids so enchanted.

sela has a bit of hero worship for sally, the patient and kind teacher. every time sela accomplishes a new task, she looks up, "sally! i did it!" and sally pops her head up and says, "yes pet! im watching!" sela has great upper body strength and can pull herself up and over the box horse and other apparatus very well. she also jumped two levels by herself and landed once on her feet! the other from her feet to her well padded caboose. (SALLY! i wear knickers! was from last week's conversation).

carys, with those long legs, is great at scaling and climbing. she liked having sally nearby today when she kangaroo jumped ten spots and then climbed a ladder. she's good at the "balance beam" as well, more adventurous than jasper, the same confidence as sela. (that's saying something). carys is also learning to turn somersaults, which she enjoys. its interesting though, at home they flip somersaults on the couch faster than you can say DON"T!, but at gymnastics, our little lulu is not as willing to do it.

i mention jasper last because of the three, he enjoys 'nastics the least. however, he enjoys it more than he enjoys any other physical activity, which makes gymnastics therefore, his favourite sport. today he really liked balancing the beanbag on his head and walking, mainly because it wasn't too physically taxing, i think. sally gave him the opportunity to be the "mouse" in the warmup game of cats and mice...she tucked a "tail" into his shorts and said, "jasper is the mouse, the rest of you are cats, come on, grab his tail!"

he frisked about the gym giggling. enjoying having the other kids chase him. but after a few circuits, he slowed down, pulled the tail out of his pants, and handed it to his instructor, with a smile, "here, thally."

they love gymnastics.

it's not like they were your ex-boyfriends...

is there an unwritten rule about inviting friends you met through friends over for dinner? IF you invite friends you met through friends for dinner and don't invite the friends that introduced you in the first place ... do the "catalyst couple" have a right to be angry?

i think the answer is i'm not sure.

one girlfriend holds a six year grudge because two people she introduced at one of her theme parties went on to become v. good buddies. "and they met because of me!" she cries whenever she hears that the two of them went on a holiday together or to the theatre.

obviously i ask for a reason. magnificent and i met a great couple through another friend of mine. we basically spent the entire party talking together. later on in the day, charles said what i had been thinking, "i would really like to see them again, we should have them for dinner."

the unsaid was hanging there. swaying like that giant spider we passed along bowen road yesterday.

"just the four of us?" i said, hopefully.

"yes".

"but how, charles? their last name is quite common."

"i remember where he works. i know people in that company, and i bet all you have to do is write his name with a dot between first and last name, then at then the company and i bet that's his email."

"ooooh i lurrrve it when you are clever," (sound of smooch or two)

i suspect this friend would be upset if she knew we were planning on spending an evening with these people. i have no plans on telling her, because it falls under the category of NOYB.

but does she have a right to be upset? sometimes when i am flying across the ocean i miss big news stories. it is possible i missed ETIQUETTE's millenium proclamation that you can't invite friends you met through others unless the catalysts are invited as well.

why do i care.

wah! so careless!

how could i? after threatening to throw rocks at boulder if she even hinted at the outcome of tar10ep2 (she watches it 10 hours before i do), i cavalierly gave off information in the blogosphere! thank you writers for the careful reminders that south africa has not started tar10. i will be very careful. and if i can't be careful, i will CAREFULLY warn you with a plain heading like TAR10 SPOILER.

having said that, ep2 was very impressive. i am NOT giving anything away (because they show this in the previews), but one team member fell off a horse but their foot stayed in the stirrup. and this person did not mention it again (or if they did, editing was working in their favour.) that impressed me, because i bet that HURT.

enough AR. more anal retentive.

how anal retentive am i, you ask? well, today i went through the closets and pulled out all the summer clothes the girls wore this past summer that i figure they will outgrow by next summer. how is THAT for closet cleaning with vengenance? i can't believe how much they have grown in the past few months. and slimmed down.

yesterday i spent three hours approx in the duchess of kent rehab hospital with the triplets completing hearing tests. despite my anal retentive ways and the findings (jasper has conductive hearing loss in both ears and glue ear in both ears, carys has glue ear in one ear), i am giving myself two days of bliss before jumping into the world of going to general gp's to get specialist referrals and googling conductive hearing loss. i just don't feel strong enough right now to do the google and take all that information in. too much else going on.

moving away from ar to moral

with all the talk about did or didn't marcia cross use donor egg...and the chances that a high percentage of celebs who conceive after the age of 40 (joan lunden, jane seymour, geena davis all became mums in their 40's but refused to comment on whether the eggs were theirs or donor..) used donor eggs...don't you think that in two decades, one of the highest selling items in the back of magazines is going to be a home dna kit? can't you see the ads?

IS YOUR MUM OLD? DID SHE HAVE YOU WHEN SHE WAS OVER 40? CHANCES ARE, SHE MIGHT NOT BE YOUR REAL MUM. FOR $15.99 YOU CAN FIND OUT FOR SURE, WITH OUR HOME DNA KIT. ALL THE ANSWERS YOU NEED.

i can see why people might not want to tell their children and their relatives that their children are not theirs genetically. but given the high numbers of donor egg/sperm children being born, this joking ad will some day be a reality breaking some suspicious kid's heart.

did you think

a few things you thought i might not have noticed

1) that the amazing race 10 started? (TAR10). tres naughty of me not to have commented but my heart has been a little bit crushed this last week and weekend. but let's start simply by saying:

a) i am tired of "model" teams. wouldn't one suffice?

b) sarah, a contestant who has a prosthetic leg, told people ahead of her in the taxi queue that she needed to take their taxi because of a medical emergency. in fact, she just wanted to get to the pitstop faster. was this wrong? my friends and i are divided in this camp. some people say

NO - she has been handed a tough course in life, let her take advantage of her disability where she can. the race is tough enough for her.

YES -it was a lie.

i fall into the second camp. also, this girl is an ironman athlete. she has achieved incredible things despite of her physical disability. lying about it just cheapens her accomplishments somehow.

c) i predict the top four finishers will be:

team model/rehab

team chobros

team ironman (aforementioned sarah and greg)

and this team that reminds me of team kelly and ron

tonight is episode two and i am trembling to watch.

2) item two

yesterday i had just finished eating cold indian food and suddenly i threw my volunteer science experiment away. am i digressing back into grade eight you inquire? possibly. it was more like i came home from summer vacation and found that even though i had THOUGHT i had secured the top of the cannister i keep the flour in VERY TIGHTLY, some renegade weevil had weasled its way in there. looking at the patterns it made in the flour, wondering why the tunnels didn't collapse, watching the clear pupae (Where are the internal organs?) turn into sullen teens and then full fledged tunnel digging adults, waching the colony multiply, seeing the corpses of the adam and eve of the flour cannister and their offspring slowly pile up and the uncaring great grandkids stumble uncaringly over them fascinated me.

for the past two weeks i have kept the cannister right beside the water dispenser so the little critters can get maximum sunshine and so i can watch them frequently. when they were in the cupboard i wasn't getting enough viewing time. it was my own little truman show. but suddenly last night i thought of them bursting out of the cannister and that combined with the cold curry made me shrug my shoulders and pitch the whole thing. charles wanted me to make a souffle of the flour, but i didn't let him. i took a picture and will post it soon, it was the coolest thing. unfortunately, i was the only one that thought so. sebastian didn't care about them the way i thought he might have.

3) the other day we were walking on bowen road. i was having a sad day and then i saw something that didn't make me feel better but sure did a lot to make me smile, i saw a MASSIVE spider. really huge. i lifted up sebastian so he could get a better look at the arachnoid, and seb was totally impressed, if a little wary. i am usually not skittish about spiders, but even i, when raising my hand so we could get a good scale on the picture we took, was a little apprehensive. his web was so thick and stringy.

if we ask charles nicely he might post the pix soon.

4) am i the only person who doesn't think tom cruise is crazy for not prostituting his child to the media? let me amend that statement. i think jumping couch tom is a few sandwiches short of a picnic but not because of the hiding the child from the paparazzi. i would have probably done the same thing. knowing the trash media, who would want to read that their child was ugly, or, as they're doing now, resembles and ex-boyfriend? tom cruise def. gets my sympathy on this one.

whew, feel much better.

only six hours until tar10ep2.

ps - if any of you internet spies know which one of my kids drew on our monitor with a pen, please let me know. Oh, and Charles posted more video on his blog.

Bouncy, Bouncy Baby - Part 1

Oh dear, Charles has discovered You Tube. Well hopefully this will be a good thing for everyone... I think there will be some very funny videos coming your way soon. Please go to his blog to find out more.

did you know???

how did you feel about terri schiavo's husband having the right to terminate her life?

how do you feel about a hospital deciding to withhold nutrition to a baby because they felt palliative care was the best option?

if i understsand correctly: the baby, emmie rose, was born in july at 23 weeks. weighing 1lb 5oz, she survived for 44 days. if a micropreemie survives the first month, their chances are looking pretty good. emmie rose was moving toward the two month mark when she was struck with NEC, an intestinal issue common in preemies. life threatening. the doctors operated, but soon declared that the child would die. and they would not intervene. apparently, not intervene also included cutting off not just medicine, but food.

here is the parents blog:

http://23weeks.blogspot.com/

agree or disagree with the hospital's policy and decision, this is a heartbreaking situation.

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

did you know that this so called peaceful coup in thailand is also quiet?

quiet because residents no longer have access to typepad and overseas tv channels like cnn or the beeb. here's an email i received last night at around midnight bangkok time from a friend there. (she hasn't responded to any of my emails today, nor have any of my other friends who live in bangkok. my calls aren't getting through. i tried calling the hospital, just to see if that call would get though, no luck.)

actually right now i can barely type, my fingers are shaking badly

from being woken up by an sms from a friend that said "school closed

tomorrow, wednesday, due to military coup". local news channels are

all just playing thai muzak and flashing images of the king and his

subjects. i can see patches of international cnn, but it keeps cutting

out and the other news channels like bbc are cut out.

just this week thaksin shinawatra has been in cuba attending the

summit of the world's 'nonaligned nations', ie venezuela, iran, north

korea, and my husband and i have been sardonically joking about how he

talks out of boths sides of his mouth, cosying up first to the states

and britain, and now...hugo chavez?! well apparently the thai military

have had enough as well, so for the first time in 15 years this

country's thin veil of attempts at democracy has been lifted again.

my isp is the telephone organisation of thailand, and i noticed before

going to bed that i couldn't access typepad to update my blog. now i

realise that i can't access any typepad blogs at all, much less the

homepage from which to work on my own. following the suit of china,

which has blocked all typepad access due to the blogs' subversive

potential, perhaps t.o.t. set their servers to block typepad (and

other blog hosts as well; i have yet to check).

by theway, as I've typed, cnn has gone out for good. tess, if this blows into something

big, and if typepad continues to be blocked, could you please consider

quoting this on your own blog if you allude to the coup? readers need

to know that the new (temporary?) powers-that-be in thailand are

preventing people from seeing the news and apparently from spreading

our views of it. call me alarmist, but a mid-evening coup accompanied

by the cutting of all news broadcasts doesn't soothe my jangled

nerves.

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

there are a lot of prayers going out tonight, for people around the world. in "free" countries and in countries that don't know what they are.

the secret of my success

my girlfriend sandi has to give a talk on success tomorrow evening.

success, like discipline, has accumulated a warped meaning over the years. when i say describe success, someone is more likely to respond, "financial!" "recognition!" which is the second definition of success, ("the attainment of wealth, fame or position") than the first, which is simply, "doing what was desired or attempted".

i consider myself to be very successful. why? because we can live in a city we love, and by making the necessary cutbacks to our lifestyle and goals, i don't have to go out of the home to work, i can stay home with the children, which is where we feel i should be right now. those are my goals, and i have them.

my definition of success does not gel with many others, who consider a 15 per cent annual increase in take home pay, supporting a younger relative through school, promotions, working for a specific charity, the ability to see one new country per year (that was my old one), restoring a family home,  etc, their definition of success.

if i could give you some advice:

KNOW your definition of success, otherwise how will you know it once you achieve it?

be CONFIDENT in your definition of success. who is anyone to tell you what you want is wrong? being a stay at home mum is successful? unless i am jk rowling, can i really say that with a straight face? yes i can, because this is what i want. and even better, those around me want it too.

success can be a passenger, or a driver. you can chase it, or it can be beside you. don't let it shape you entirely, but don't be afraid to take confidence in your successes. and your failures.

failures.

those are the things people want to hear about. those are what make you interesting. people love to hear the rags to riches stories, but not as much as they love to hear how a person toppled off the pedastal.

but people love the failure stories. tabloids don't make money by reporting that brad and angelina look "So Happy"...reporting their rows sells.

know your definition of success, and own up to your failures. we've all got an interesting success story or failure. what's yours?

cheeky!

an email from one of those anon sites!

The reason those chicks are not the million dollar models is because they are not the ideal. Ask any guy who he would rather have, that Geisha Girl or someone like Jessica Simpson, and he'll say Jessica Simpson. You're missing the point. In the last 30 years cross cultural marriages have become acceptable and typical in Asia. But they are not a first choice, they are an option. And for lots of ugly guys, a great option.

maybe i did miss the point. but anon, i'm safe in assuming you're not rupert murdoch, right?

on to a very cute anecdote.

you know how at some stage, your children actually believe the parent to be absolutely one hundred percent correct at all times. this could be because the parent speaks with authority, is usually right (this would be the category into which magnificent charles falls under), sweeps everyone along before they can question the decision, talks so loudly that children confuse that for the right decision, or whatever.

but here is a conversation between my friend susan and her four year old son.

mummy, it is true, you know everything.

well, yes, i do, but how do you know that i know everything?

well, i know that you know everything because when i wake up in the middle of the night, and you tell me to go and do a wee, even though i don't think i have to and i ALWAYS have wee. ALWAYS.

have a great day.

the trend train

it is a well documented and growing phenonmenon: caucasian men from europe/north america marrying asian women.

while many men enter into their mixed race marriages for love and compatibility, others for other reasons. "she is so hot. until i came to asia no girl looked at me, and suddenly the most beautiful thin girls in the world were attracted to me."

in hong kong, it is a difficult life for a single caucasian female. the competition for single caucasian men is fierce. just read the personal ads: at least 40 per cent of them state they are looking for a western man. very few of the ads request a caucasian female.

many men describe asian women as ideal: their petite frames make them feel ultra masculine being an added bonus. their beauty overwhelming.

however

in luxury print ads, caucasian women are typically the models used to display/enhance the product. buy this and you can date me is the not so sublimal message. yet more and more men prefer asian women.

why aren't asian women figuring in these ads? goodness knows there are many stunning asian models out there. many men state they prefer asian women, so why are caucasian women still upheld as the "ultimate" partner?

marketing companies spend enough on test audiences to follow trends. mixed race marriages are not limited to asia. obviously they feel that the miss universes out there will sell more than an asian model would.

there is a piece missing to all of this. i'm looking for it. maybe being in asia prevents me from seeing the puzzle. there are a few options, none of them palatable.

why is it that the popular and prized first choice isn't prized internationally?