Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

animal house

tame animals all have their quirks.

whenever olivia the cat hears the can opener cranking away, she dashes to the kitchen. whenever my childhood dog heard the front or back door open, he would run to it. each time that my parents had decided nipper the cat was criminally uncaring, he would redeem himself. and whenever xia xia, cat of my dreams was particularly excited, she would claw herself up the drapes.

some people begin to look like their pets. my children are becoming my pets.

in the 30 minutes before mealtime, if jasper hears the bleeping of the microwave oven, he will begin to half heartedly sob and hustle towards his highchair. the kid could be pavlov's dog. today he WALKED three steps to the kitchen, then crawled to the eating area, all because i pressed the button that cleared the screen and restored the microwave to showing the correct time once again.

sela has fast forwarded herself to her teen years. home is like, so, you know, boring. no way! way! after her 8.45am nap, i let her down from her cot and she trots to the front door. waiting to be let out. she bangs on the door if we are taking too long in the getting ready to go outside process. she gets angry if we take sebastian down to the school bus and don't take her with us. what is so repulsive about home? she's happy to eat here and watch telly....but happier to escape. she's like mel gibson in braveheart, "Freedom"!

sebastian. really back into the school swing of things, he has added charming expressions like "ooh ooh poo poo" to his vocabulary and did i mention he told someone to shut up the other day and that he called me stupid. (way! said sela.) i feel like i am choosing all the wrong battles and through my appalling parenting am ruining him. so then today sebastian goes to play with anjali, his best turtle school gal pal friend. she's lovely, anjali is. and i go to pick him up, and anjali's mother, who is a teacher, could only say how wonderfully the two got along. it wasn't the knowing that i haven't ruined him (yet) that made me cry for relief, more that he could have fun. she commented on his creativity, which is one of sebastian's most stellar features.

and young carys. besides weeing all over the bathroom floor while waiting to get into the bathtub (where everyone else wees), she has this unpredictable manic burst of laughter or energy that comes from no where. she will cackle and race around screeching in her hoarse little demi moore voice, and then the full moon receeds in her mind's eye, and she goes back to stacking blocks or ripping books off the shelf.

my children are house animals.

not toilet trained, of course.

ambient ambience

another reason to call him magnificent.

charles and his california based boss returned to hong kong from china late friday night.

saturday night, they had a dinner. for that matter, so did i. however, when i had made the plans for the girls night out, i had overlooked that saturday was a public holiday (national day), and helpers automatically get the day off. end result: charles went out for his business dinner, i stayed home.

i called mc at midnight, which is unusual for me. i wasn't checking up on him per se, it was more like i knew he was leaving again in 12 hours for five days this time, and there were things we needed to talk about. silly things, but things none the less.

he said that his boss (quite cool from what i can gather) had not been to an asian karaoke, and they were going. i looked at the clock and said, "okay, just remember, you leave tomorrow, sebastian loves spending time with you, and tomorrow morning is the only time you two will have all week to be together."

mc walked in the door at 3.15am this morning. fell asleep very quickly, and no surprise at all, was up with the trio at 6.40am this morning. and sebastian. sure, he plugged sebastian into a video, but the point is .. he made the choice to go out and still lived up to his responsibilities as a dad. tres happy i married him. even though he is in india right now.

interesting new quirks are unleashing themselves at the team caldwell corrall.

first let me say that no one fell out of the shopping cart on saturday. we took two booster seats with us and they made all the difference. we had a good family shop and then went to the playground in front of park n; shop in bagio villa for a 20 minute play. so it's nice not to have that red bruise reminding me what a terrible parent i am.

sebastian has a "special blanket". although he has always been fond of sb, it isn't a linus-like situation. we don't take special blanket with us on holidays, and sebastian has never trailed around the house carrying it. if SB is being washed when he goes for a nap or to bed, there is no scene. he knows SB belongs on his bed, and that if he wants to cuddle SB, the place to do that is in his room.

but his fondness of SB is very touching. the other day i was folding the very freshly laundered SB, while sebastian was eating his lunch. he was sitting 12 feet away from me, and i called out his name, and when he looked at me, i lifted up SB. his reaction to SB was just the same as it always has been. he put his lips together in a smile, breathed out his nose and laughed, an affectionate, loving laugh that he gives when he sees something he loves. i see his face run through the same contortions when he catches sight of me waiting for him as the school bus pulls up. it isn't a laugh of joy, it is the physical show of the security washing over him. 

jasper is not walking. but he is standing. and then sitting. jasper used to burst into noisy tears whenever i laid him down for naps, but not any more. he stands in his crib for a few minutes, then i assume lays down (because he sleeps laying down, so that is a pretty good assumption i figure..unless he falls and hits his head?) and pushes himself to the corner of his crib and slumbers away. jasper is also learning to hold his own spoon, and he gets so carried away with the applause that comes with holding the aforementioned spoon that he forgets to put the spoonful of food in his mouth and starts crying with hunger and because no one is feeding him. upon sighting his empty bowl, jasper will put down his spoon and wave both hands, exclaiming, "ahhh gah", his version of "all gone" (or all done, im not sure).

the girls have a very endearing new habit which i cannot take credit for at all. during nappy change time, we roll up the dirty nappy and place it to the side. after the new nappy is on, we put the girls on the floor, hand them the dirty nappies and ask them to please put it in the bin. and they do. doesn't sound like much but oh goodness it is sweet. even cuter if they are buck naked and about to head into the bath.

oh, better run, sebastian is ready for dinner. he gets to choose which sibling will eat dinner with him at his tiny table, and together the two enjoy eating by candlelight because, "a candle is ambience, mummy."