Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

not good nepotism

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY ZALI!!! TUESDAY WAS THE DAY!

friday is playgroup day. lita and i take all three bambini to the PPA, parent playgroup association. there is a huge playroom, a smaller room filled with kid sized play kitchen equipment, tables with art and crafts on them, and an outside area with sand pits, water tanks, and ride on toys. my children love the PPA. fact.

of course, we're not the only people there. and i am beginning to learn that my children treat other children differently than they treat their own siblings. thankfully, they treat them a fair sight nicer.

today sela was eyeing this one little boy who was holding a sponge bob square pants book she was coveting. she was shifting from one foot to another, watching him with this book, her hands wringing a la lady macbeth. when he finally put it down, carys dashed over to the book and scooped it up, much to her sister's disgust. you would have thought that sela would go back to the shifting and sliding around, but with the book firmly in the paws of someone she has no issues about pummelling, she reached out and grabbed the book. carys responded by pushing her older sister. and mummy had to step in and return to the book to carys. sela got over her pique to participate in the circle time singing, but it was touch and go for a while there.

the "i hit you" hilarity continued on the way home. in the taxi, jasper, exhausted from his exemplary efforts during snack time, fell asleep in my arms. (car seats are not mandatory in hong kong). carys however, was alert and unhappy. a flashback to this morning, when she woke up and was so unhappy at the breakfast she was being served (weetabix) that she hit her dad and received a time out for her efforts. she sat on the sofa and screamed until she realised that no one was paying attention to her anymore.

in the taxi, carys decided that hitting sela would be fun. sela had other thoughts. i made each girl give me a "gentle touch", where they stroke my arm or face gently, as a reminder as to what a "gentle touch" is. then as they started sliding into each other, pushing each other, pinching etc, i decided separating them was my best course of action. jasper and i slid into the middle of the seat, and i put sela next to us.

she was chuffed at the thought of being so near a door, and so i basically had to hold her arm the rest of the way home. when we got home, sela took my encouragement to "use her words" and said, "choclate thak uu".... which is apparently twice as good as a regular thank you. jasper then started singing a la Old Mc Donald..."E I E I O" and carys started crying. a good nap put her to rights.

deja flu

the reality of avian flu is upon us.

today i went to an agm of an organisation i am chairperson of. just about the only item that needed attention was the creation of an ACTION PLAN FOR AVIAN FLU. we need to determine if anyone will be reimbursed if we temporarily close before or after bird flu hits. i need to write a letter to all members explaining our policy.

i get home and learn that magnificent charles last week was assigned to create a bird flu scenario for the asia pacific region, together with a few people in california.

i see people i know, people i respect, who have hoarded one month's worth of water and rice and other non perishable food items in their flat, because they believe bird flu will be running rampant through the city and the supermarkets. some parents have been to see their children's teachers to discuss lesson plans for when the schools are closed.

it doesn't seem so long ago that we were singing the SARS song, and businesses were closed and people were exodusing the city. except for bird flu has greater potential to mutate, and harm people. and unlike SARS, no where is safe. canada will get hit with the migratory bird pattern, if not from person to person contact from someone off an airplane, apparently.

the news has been pretty quiet with bird flu reports and updates for the past couple of days. but they're all pointing towards WHEN it hits, not IF. and no where seems to be immune, and no drug seems to be effective from this constantly mutating disease.

we're playing wait and see, and we don't know how long we will be waiting for. magnificent and i need to figure out a game plan. from what i have read, once the flu is spread by personal contact, the recommendations will be containing yourself inside until the quarantine has passed.

my children are outside at least twice a day, for a minimum of 90 minutes per session. most assuredly, they would not be impressed if their outside visits were revoked. reasoning with them would not be effective either.

i am scared of this flu for so many reasons. call me flighty, but barracading my children indoors is one of those reasons why.

sars wasn't so long ago. but that was another disease, another handwash, another drug.

any advice is welcome.

after our computer has stood idle for five minutes, a slideshow featuring family photos comes flashing on the screen.

sela is obsessed with this slideshow. any chance she cans, she runs to the computer, looks at the computer and shouts, BABY!

it is a rather accurate yell, as 60 per cent of the pictures are baby shots of all four.

sela thinks these photos are magic. baby! BABY! BaBy!

jasper and carys aren't as interested in the photos, although sebastian likes identifying "little baby sebastian" whenever he sees his face pop up on the screen.

it is mid november, and those cities located above the equator are meant to be getting chilly.

NOT SO.

for the past week it has been 30 above. hot hot hot. the top's of my children's heads are sweaty and they have little rashes everywhere. i know that come february it will be freezing cold (about 12 degrees) and so i am going to enjoy this heat wave while i can. i even walked into town today.

more soon, right now must work. deadlines looming.

just do it

discipline has entered the triumverate's echelon.

annoyingly, but understandably, each child has a form of discipline that they respond best to.

how well do you know them?

WHEN IN NEED OF DISCIPLINING and MAKING A POINT THAT THEY NEED TO SHAPE UP...

1) jasper best responds to

2) sela best responds to

3) carys best responds to

a) being removed from the scene

b) having the item removed from them

c) being told NO! in a rather stern voice

it's jasper's turn to feel the imprint of mum's thumb on his head. he becomes an unreasonable wailer at times. today at lunch i was smart enough to figure out that he was screaming because he had reached the end of his little tether, and i just put him to bed without lunch. two minutes after placing him in bed, he was asleep. but exhaustion is not always the culprint...and jasper needs to learn that screaming will not get him picked up or immediate attention.

sela, she of the iron lungs and angry cries, was the first to try the screaming for attention scheme.  we managed to train her out of it, and now she is realising that she gets a lot more, a lot faster, by being charming. she's blowing kisses, saying peas and fank you, grinning and generally licking up in a fashion that makes me wonder if politics are in her future. but it is effective.

carys still gets her own way by practicing her effective, don't ask, just do. sort of the nike slogan for delinquents.  quietly quietly, she will slip a toy off a shelf, open a door that she knows it meant to be shut, pull a tail attached to a cat. if she wants something that requires adult intervention, she is a genius at just appearing plucking at your pants or tugging your hand, and looking at the desired item inquistively with her glistening blue eyes. of the three, she needs the most prompting to say please and thank you, but when she does, it comes out in a hoarse whisper.

sebastian, sela and carys have each thrown about three tantrums in their lives, so now that jasper is getting to the unreasonable throw yourself down on the floor stage, i am ready for it. i feel so much more prepared to handle bedtimes and tantrums and teaching manners than other things like teaching to respect feelings. repetition is monotonous and tiring, but it does not require skill.  tess=tired, check. can say the same thing over and over again, check. has little skill? check.

hence, i find myself qualified.

easy rider

during hong kong's heavy humid days, even perenially freezing people (yes, yes, the thyroid thing, i will get it checked out soon), break into a sweat just seconds after walking outdoors. when walking in to meet an interviewee for the first time, the sweat circles under the pits, itchy hose, smeared makeup and wet nape of neck is, surprise, not a good look muriel.

in order to prevent their citizens from arriving at the office all sweaty and unattractive (and possibly, horrors! unable to work!), and also to ease congestion of the streets, in 1993, the hong kong government unveiled the central-midlevels escalators, the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world.

central is one of the main business districts in hong kong, and if you don't work in central, you can catch the subway, tram, a regular double decker bus or a 16 seater mini bus to take you to your office in a matter of minutes. midlevels is a residential district that sits pretty much right on top of central. people love living in mid-levels for its convenience to the action. hong kong is all about location location locaiton, and midlevels is pretty much as good as it gets. having a covered escalator system ferry you up and down the steep hills was just an added bonus.

the whole escalator system is 800 m long, and the vertical climb is 135 m. if you were to stand still while riding the escalators the entire ride would take 20 minutes, but come on, this is hong kong, people are usually walking while the system moves to shorten the travel time. due to its vertical climb, the same distance is equivalent to several miles of zigzagging roads if travelled by car. the operation  consists of 20 escalators and three moving sidewalks. the daily traffic exceeds 45,000 people and on wednesdays, 45,001 people, as i usually hop on at some point through out the day.

the escalators downhill beginning at 6am to 10am, basically to take residents of the midlevels area to work. why walk or taxi when you can basically sit and be carried down to the main business district in a covered atmosphere?  by 10am, if you're not at work, tough congee, kittens, because the escalators stop at 10.00am for half an hour, and then start moving uphill (because that's the really hard work, chugging uphill), from 10am until midnight. needless to say, the pubs and even the truly appalling restaurants along the escalators do a roaring business.

when magnificent and i lived in midlevels (we have lived in that area twice, once in 1996-1997, and again in 1999-2001, moving is very common in hong kong!) the escalators were part of our daily lives. although they start on commercial des voeux road central and end on residential conduit road, the escalators are smushed along side shops, a temple, many restaurants, a fitness centre, and many residential blocks.

in one of those blocks, right near the top, lives a fellow who works from home. i used to see him every day. he had a white cat, who sat on a pillow beside his laptop, or in the next room, on the windowsill.

i looked forward to seeing this cat and man, they were as much a part of my daily encounters as the garbage lady, and the man who walked up and down our street yelling that he was available to sharpen our knives. i would lug bags of fresh fruit from the wet market located underneath the escalators, and would just dump my bags and stand there, think about something else, like not being fertile and how i was going to solve that particular little problem. and i would only look up when we came to his flat, and kitten was there. or not. this was before SUDUKO, whether the cat would be there or not was my daily mental exercise.

when we moved to pokfulam, (pokfulam is closer to a suburb, is much greener, a much more residential area than central. some people find it inconvenient, not having a 7-11/park n'shop within a five minute walk, but for the extra space between blocks and the greenery, we'll gladly take it), i pretty much stopped seeing the little SAHWorker and his cat. i wondered if he missed magnificent and me, or even if he had noticed us. he was part of our world, were we part of his?

linked lives. the escalators are just another reason of why i love hong kong. it is such an unique, fascinating, exciting city.

over one year ago i confessed that i disliked feeding my children.

interestingly, despite a year where the babies have changed a great deal (the vomitting has ceased drastically, they now walk, sing and babble), some things have not changed.

they still don't have hair, and i still don't particularly enjoy feeding them.

in particular, i don't enjoy being with sebastian while he is eating.

HE. IS. SO. SLOW.

it is agonising to be around this little blonde dude during mealtimes.

he does everything but eat. it is so annoying. and half the time it is my fault because we get to talking and then next thing i know 20 minutes have passed and he hasn't lifted his spoon or he is plucking choice items off his plate with his fingers and placing them into his mouth sporradically.

it is enough to drive me insane. am i not meant to talk with him? where is the balance between eating and having a proper dinner hour? if he eats, he isn't talking, but the minute i give him a break from eating, he manages to turn it to a 20 minute break from eating the food. it stuns me how much i dislike eating with him.

i give him credit, he does have manners...that's one of the things i love about sebastian getting closer to his fourth birthday...i am seeing ROI for the endless hours i spent repeating please, thank you, excuse me and i beg your pardon. his table manners are good, he doesn't talk while chewing. the problem is, he prefers staring off into space, or getting up and racing down the hallway to show me the book he wants me to read him at bedtime, or picking a piece of cat hair off his leg to eating his dinner.

at restaurants, he is much more enthusiastic about eating, and food disappears on a fairly regular basis, especially when he knows we are holding back the chips until his plate is cleared. but at home..oh, many, the AGONY. the forever agony.

i have considered timing him, giving him a reasonable set time for meals, but when i mentioend this to a friend i was informed that i was teaching him bad eating habits by rushing him through a meal and he would be obese and never get a girlfriend and it would all be my fault that he had a terrible life. gah.

instead, he knows that when he gets up from the table, that's it, meal time is over. unless it is to do a wee-wee. so then, we get to live through the pleasure of being woken up the next morning at 5.30 with the cheery,

mummy, i want my bweakfast now. i's so hungwy. 

it's not that he is full, he doesn't start eating, so he can't be full. and i know what he is eating on the playground isn't enough to fill him up. it's not like i am discouraging him to chew his food...he doesn't get that far. fork does not reach mouth. its not like he dislikes his food, although chances are it would taste better warm.

i am in good company, if that is ANY consolation. his teacher, the beloved michelle, has commented that sebastian is having trouble concentrating at school during the morning routine of setting out diary, removing outdoor coat and shoes, hanging up knapsack and bookbag, putting on indoor shoes. she gives him time limits and sometimes has to walk him through the routine. easily distracted, she says.

his distraction is driving me to distraction.

ill is well-come

does anyone else secretly love it when their kids are just little bit under the weather?

not sick enough to vomit, tyvm, but not 100 per cent.

today sebastian was under the weather. i gave him the bug i caught from jasper. high fever, sore throat, chills. he went to school, ate his lunch, but by 4pm had had, enough. i came down the playground and he walked over to me. not ran. he took my hand and we walked over to where jasper was playing. when he saw me, jasper abandoned his ride on car and walked a la frankenstein to me. sebastian immediately took possession of the car jj had vacated, but didn't immediately ride off into the sunset on it. he just sat there, looking at me.

after 10 minutes or so, i put jasper near the slide and wandered off to another area of the playground. and sebastian followed me. i had carys on my lap for a bit, and sebastian sat beside me. leaned against me quietly. i felt the moisture of his hair seeping into the arm of my t-shirt. eventually carys toddled off, and i pulled sebastian into my lap.

sebastian has never been a cuddler, so my opportunities to hold him are precious. i try to make the most of them. so today sebastian and i sat in an out of the way spot in the playground and i just whispered "baby sebastian' stories to him. and then when i had exhausted "baby sebastian has to go to the hospital" and "baby sebastian goes to church" and "baby sebastian goes to canada", i told him other facts he likes to hear...how he used to refer to carys, nappies, michelle and wee-wee as taris, wappies, she-shell, and vee-vee. that got a few smiles from him and the comment,

i am such a silly-billy boy,

but they were whispered, his head pressed into my shoulder.

we came upstairs and he drew a picture for me and i read him four books. he was so docile, agreed with everything i said. as a special treat we read in mummy and daddy's bed, and i gave him juice with ice and a straw. he liked the stories and didn't ask the usual number of questions.

i wouldn't want him to be not 100 per cent everyday, what sort of parent wants that? but as a parent just recovering from a high fever and chills and cold, when your child is slightly off, you don't have to be as "on", which was necessary, because i am still not 100 per cent myself. if he sleeps through the night, i figure by morning i will be.

crack addict

here we go again.

i walked through the kid's bedroom last night, the typical last minute picking up of blankets and toys, putting away folded socks, removing feet perilously close to being shoved between slats, lifting blankets off faces. with the maximum of touching and smoothing and wiping and holding. in the silence urging them through my touch to know of my love.

they are so big in their cots. so very very big. when we brought them home, all three tightly swaddled tots shared one cot, with plenty of room to spare. and when they moved to individual cots, they would get lost in them. i don't want another baby, i am so relieved they are growing and thriving, but i don't want to lose my babies. and i have. crack goes my heart.

little lulu, such a lanky girl. the weather is turning cold, and i bought the girls pink tights for the playground. i finish my interview, and head down to the playground. and i see carys, frisking about, tights bagging at the knees, floppy at the toes, huge concentration on her face as she pulls at a plant leaf. and i stand in front of her and finally she looks up, sees me and starts running. gawky little legs, happy smile, hoarse cry. and then i hold her for 20 minutes, her arms clasping me tightly, the beloved playground for right now, a distant second to being held by mummy. crack.

sela loves being read to. she approaches me with a book and facing me, will hand the book over. and then, with a series of little steps, she moves 180 degrees, turns her head to make eye contact, then drops into my lap. uk pees! she instructs, placing one hand on each of my wrists. and i begin reading. we can maybe read it once before the others arrive and she has to relinquish the lap, but i know that she loves these times together, that having the lap, MY lap, is an essential part of the reading. crack.

crack is the sound when jasper is lying with me on my bed in a patch of sunlight. i am singing "Head and shoulders knees and toes" and repeating the bit about eyes, ears mouth and nose, touching his features, and mine. jasper reaches up, pulls my finger from my nose, and puts it to his mouth, covering it wth his own hand. and then blows me a kiss. smiles. crack.

two new cracks courtesy of sebastian:                                                                                 

crack when he comes to me with a fresh boo-boo, still believing that my kiss can make it better.

and the long clear crack on the playground when he is talking to another little boy about a broken toy. my mummy can fix it. sebastian declares. my mummy can do anyfing.

oh but i can't, i can't slow time down, i don't want to slow time down, but i don't want to forget these precious times.

the baby smell is fading from the back of their necks. crack. how much more can my heart grow?

what's in a name?

much to the disgust of a a few triplet mums, someone from another website perused through the triplet website, copied down the names of every member's children, and proceeded to rate them into the following categories: the good, the bad, the trendy and the mundane.

there were a lot of ruffled feathers, as popular (emily, jack, ava, madison, ashley) are scorned there, ditto for names creatively spelt (myranda, keighlee). names starting with the first letter, or rhyming were pretty much flamed.

where did jasper, sela and carys fit in?

trendy.

can you imagine? i purposely chose names that i thought NOT to be trendy. you don't see a lot of j, s or c's running about the place. or at least i didn't think you do. do you? trendy? i know catherine zeta jones named her daughter carys...but i didn't think a lot of other people had. and sela, trendy?

one of the more honest triplet mums wrote that her feelings were hurt knowing that someone didn't like her child's name. but to be honest, probably a lot of people don't like her child's name.

not just her child, ANY child. i have lots of friends who have named a child something i wouldn't. (obviously! i go for trendy names, apparently!)

but you know what? after you see and touch that child whose name you don't really like, you don't really think about the name, you think about the baby. that's the way it is. i haven't run across a baby called anything i find truly offensive like adolf, but i do think the theory would hold true even then.

the meanings behind our children's names is very important to magnificent and me. apparently it is bad that i chose the welsh version of carys, instead of going with karis. but my grandfather used that welsh expression when he said goodnight to us...carys dunwell. my daugher's name is carys.

jasper, he is precious. i am sorry there is a national park by the same name, and that some people think the name is red neck and others think it is posh.

sela - pause and reflect. the name after virtually every psalm. i love the meaning, i love the way her name floated in a room amongst the bleeping machines. rest now, sela. ssshhh shhh sela. when laying in the hospital ward trying to choose a name for her, we test run the names by speaking them aloud. sela. it gave me peace.

sebastian - the patron saint of soldiers. my grandfather was a soldier. and although some believe the name sebastian is too "snooty"...i have a tough time remembering that when he has collapsed in years into my arms, weeping because someone on the bus sat on the special drawing he had made for me.

i don't think you can love someone and not love their name.

(someone said it doesn't matter what their name is, it matters the tone you speak it in. that's nice in theory, but if you had heard me bellowing CARYS! on the playground not 40 minutes ago, you would wonder....)