Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

the last time i posted, seb had snap crackled popped his head open and it had been stitched up rather nicely while we diverted him with talk of his birthday party.

one week later, the stitches are out, the birthday party has been had, and today, sebastian turned five. "a whole hand" he said wonderingly, as he pressed his open hand against mine.

sebastian is five. years. old.

i can remember when he was five days old, and wondering where time had gone. had this bald creature only been cracking and chafing the inside and out of my chest for five days?

and five weeks, i wondered where time had gone. so many pictures i could and should have taken, so many moments lost.

at five months, i started attending mother's groups and started listening and wondering where time had gone. so many opportunities lost to increase my child's future academic performance. why hadn't i been using flash cards already? why hadn't i been playing classical music 24/7? why did i wear colours instead of exclusively black and white? where had time gone? each week represented a lost iq mark. my child, my future academic unachiver, my fault for slacking.

at five years, i look at him , forearms drifting out of the arms of pajamas that just yesterday i thought i bought. words and arguments bursting out of him. excitement in the world and his place in it, and the possibilities for him. questions that appear, in the pattern of all children, right before bedtime. there are new moles on his face that weren't there last year. a couple on his back.

his little four pack, and muscular legs. he is a much better football player than he was last year. he's no beckham, but he is steady. and while he isn't the fastest runner, he can run long distances. not easily winded is our boy.

he has a line in the school play this year. he is a wise man. we are learning it together. his high pitched voice will be encouraging the other wise men to find the baby king. the same high pitched voice that encourages me to find the gum, chippies, yakult, sausages and chocolate dipped biscuits in park n shop and doesn't get too upset when i say, "they're not on the list this week".

sebastian and i were reading a book together the other day, franklin and harriet, i think. and he described the scene from a picture perfectly. "sebastian!" i said, and smiled because the old eyeballs were getting a little moist.

and he looked at me and said, "i know mummy, i know. i'm cwacking your heawt, aren't i."

he's five.

today.

Seb In Utero

last week we had a parent/teacher meeting at small world christian kindie, sebastian's school. we were very pleased with seb's progress and his teachers' assessment of seb's development. they noted what we have, that one skill that has really come to the fore is the skill of happily being a group member. the school really emphasises the "we not me" emotional and social aspect, which seb (and every other child in this world) needs reminding of! they also included a portfolio of his work, and one of them was this classic, with the rather rambling title of,

"this is me when i was a baby in my mummy's tummy".

it will be coming up for auction at sotheby's spring 2007 auction, being so impressionistic and all.

keeping me in stitches

today sebastian's class had a field trip. i have a streaming cold and my voice is a la demi moore and my nose is drip drip dripping. we went to view some of hong kong's tallest skyscrapers and then the kids demolished icecream and biscuits while the adults gratefully gulped tea and coffee. back on ground floor the teacher then gave each child a biro and a piece of paper and instructed them to draw the buildings they had seen.

sebastian drew a helicopter, the smoke from the star ferry, the waves, and the four seasons (the hotel not the pizza), the ivc tower (i always write ivf tower...habit??) and a few others, then we handed in his masterpiece to miss rupa and he ambled over toward the fountains. it was spitting outside. seb jumped up and started trotting around the marble that surrounds the fountains. "sebastian" i said in a polite, low voice, "get down please" you know, the first warning, modulated voice. there were other grownups present, you understand.

he continued trotting, backback jouncing merrily.

"sebastian!" i barked, in a violent sort of way.

it was at this point that sebastian invariable slipped on the wet marble and smacked his head on the marble, then tumbled off the marble on to the floor (only 1.5 feet). he lay there for a minute, while the kids and mums did a collective, "ohhhhhh!" and then got up and wailing came over to me. i made sure that his pupils were even, asked him to touch his nose with his finger, and then started in on him. however, my tirade , which included words like, "reason...mummy's....no....prevent....accident....listen..." was cut short when i saw that sebastians hand was red.

for a second i wondered if the red biro he had been using had exploded in his hand. oh ho ho. not quite.

i pulled him closer to me and looked behind his head and saw that is was sliced open. blood was pouring down his neck and was caught up in his hair.

i called to one of the other mums, "can you come here for a minute please?"

and she did.

i am so impressed by mothers during a crisis. one mother wiped off sebastian's hand saying, "he shouldn't see the blood". another took off a bandage dipped it in the fountain and wiped away the blood. another bandage was placed over the wound, while a bandaid was placed over that to staunch the bloodflow. another mum said to divert the sobbing seb, "i think you'll be well enough for your party, don't you seb?" and of course he said, "yes, i will!"

we got into the taxi and headed to the hospital. seb was very quiet and the taxi driver was swearing at the thought of blood staining his already filthy taxi. to tone him out, sebastian and i prayed in the taxi together, and sebastian prayed to Father God that the pain would go away quickly and that he would be okay.

after one hour in emergency, he got three stitches. i watched them give him the stitches and was very impressed with the job they did.


but on the way home, as i was giving sebastian the talk about listening to mummy and how if he had done so this wouldn't have happened, and how mummy's say NO to things not because we're mean and no fun, but because things are UNSAFE, sebastian said, "you're right mummy".

and i said (immensely gratified), "you mean it? you know that it was unsafe and that's why i said no?"

and he responded, "yes mummy, i do. there was a gun in the bottom of the fountain and you were trying to protect me from it."

why do i bother???

model misbehaviour

if the truman show were the tess show i would be:

a) pleased to be within such close proximity to ed harris

and

b) slightly quizzical, but pleased that after suffering at the six hands of the enfants terribles yesterday, that today they were quirky, endearing, and redeeming. i might even list the surprising things they had done.

well, jasper fell out of bed last night at 4am and didn't fall back asleep, does that count? and they taught themselves a new song, "charlie charlie bum bum bum" how about that? should my heart be melting? am i the malfunctioning one here?

apparently the blow to jasper's forehead was bad enough for

a) people to endlessly comment "what happened to HIM?" all today and

b) for the him in question to stay awake half the night wailing in distress and checking himself like a first year med student that after his tragic fall he could still clap his hands and sing (he could).

and today was an interesting day, because sela and carys were meant to be helping a friend out modelling some of her clothes for her catalogue. they were not getting paid, i had not submitted their names to be considered, i was asked as a favour along with some others. jasper wasn't necessary, but as the photo shoot was two hours before gymnastics and SALLY!!!! i dragged jasper along. this meant all the kids were short changed on their naps which after yesterday and last night, they were in desperate need of.

we got to the location, and the assistant brought out outfits for sela and carys. they wanted them in very similar outfits. unfortunately, sela wanted to wear the blue chanel type coat that had been earmarked for carys, due to carys' eye colour, and that was enough to cause la belle sela to burst into floods of tears. the wine coloured jacket she wore was too large.

the tears stopped when two ballerina/princess dresses were pulled out. one cream coloured, the other a deep red. i let sela have first choice and she selected the cream. told me "i like this pretty dress". the girls changed, and we adjusted the backs with clips (carys' dress was wayyy too big in the bodice, sela's wayy too big in the waist) and ignored jasper's pleas to wear, "pitty dresses".

and then we waited. for an hour while some other very cute kids took their shots.

the kids got really restless and we made umpteen trips to the loo. the waiting was not easy.

and finally it was our turn. the lights were hot, the girls were restless, and they were not in the mood for smiling, or, i learned, swinging their pretty dresses. seriously. sela lay down on the floor and said, "no". shortly after, carys followed.

recognising a crisis, i pulled out a lolly and told the photog we had maybe five more minutes and to get the shots...hurry.

at some point, someone had asked if jasper would be willing to model. jasper with the lump in the middle of his forehead? sure, why not. he was pushed into a velvet doublet sized for an 18 month old, and had to wait around. and suddenly, he raced out to his sisters, and began twirling around like they refused to. the photog was enchanted. we finished with the girls quickly, and then it was jasper's turn.

jasper.

jasper, who found his mark quickly. all we had to say to him was, "go back to your tape", and he would. jasper who jumped, smiled, flirted, lowered his lashes, grinned, pursed, (picked his nose as well, if im being totally truthful) and cajoled in and out of three 18 month outfits. he was dead charming. amazingly so.

jasper and i stayed longer than the girls did, and finally i insisted that we leave because gymnastics was about to start. he loved it.

modelling. jasper. maybe.

before today, i would have thought that sela would have been our tiny tinned ham. i guess not. i was asked if i wanted jasper to do more work, and i said i wasn't sure. truth is, i'm not. he seemed to enjoy it. that's what counts.

did i enjoy it? not while sela and carys were being evil? not one bit. but parts of it were fun. watching them have fun was fun. wondering if they would be able to photoshop out the bruise on jasper's forehead was fun.

it just struck me....are my kids acting like this because they think they're going to be the next naomi campbell???

"nap", uh, crap.

i am a fraud.

i read a blog i had written a while ago and for some reason i made it sound like i had life under control. or at least my kids.

that is so not the case.

i don't.

i realised this quite forcefully after two days of non napping yes freakazoiding kid activity all over the place. what is with my kids?

do you think that in the back of my mind i am remembering that sebastian was a fairly tolerable two year old but a testy three year old? the thought is driving me BONKERS. can it get much worse? will i ever be able to get the desired result from my children without dragging blood or teeth from them first? why does their room look like a crime scene after "nap"?

today, during "nap", the kids removed their gro-bags, either together (please frugal blake, don't tell me that i should be impressed that they are working together, like good union employees do) or separately, and pushed sela's bed away from the window. then somehow they pushed over the heater. and then they removed the wooden slats from above jasper's bed.

i am appalled. they have no respect.

i can go barging in there, and the only result is, they begin squealing, "noooooooo!" which comes out sounding, "neeeeeeeeeewwww" which is pathetic. like i am the person at fault. if i didn't want to know what was going on i should not have entered the inner sanctum. i am appalled by them.

if i EVER made it sound like i was a good parent, i apologise. i am not. magnificent is a good parent, which is why today i picked up the phone and called charles (he is in tokyo in case you are keeping track) and told him (while the kids were listening) how they had destroyed their room. they started crying but only because i would't let them hold the phone and sing happy birthday to daddy.

i am a bad parent, worse, an ineffective one.

dislike them, despise myself.

next thing you know i am going to be saying, "if you don't stop crying, i am going to throw you out the window!"

deviled egg

no massive surprise, i didn't do too well in physics as an aspiring ambitious student.

but surely there is a forum which explains why as my life gets busier my kids get sicker.

surely not! you exclaim, slack jawed in disbelief.

no, its true.

today, right after naps, i am trying to put together a comprehensive grocery list while unpacking the items i brought to the funeral yesterday and repacking my bag for tonight, when jasper comes running towards me, exclaiming the by now tired statment, "sela did a poo". he begins coughing and i brush past him, heading towards my shoes, hoping that everyone else will put on their shoes. that is, IF they want to come to park and shop with me.

instead, jasper stops running, stands there, opens his mouth and vomits.

vomits.

there is no reason for this vomit. no bug he has caught, no choke, no nothing. but there you go. vomit.

disinfectant, rags, water. wipe scrape, clean between wood.

it is amazing.

not the vomit.

please, i am so over being stunned by bodily functions that any of my kids make that i could be in the middle of eating cereal, and if jasper vomitted, i would probably keep on eating. i AM SO OVER THAT.

but the timing. amazing. impressive.

they just can't vomit when i'm bored, can they.

or won't.

ear appointments went interestingly yesterday. thank you for the inquiring emails. the kids are pretty good in doctors offices.

the problem is with ears, is that ear drums are protected by ear wax.

the problem with ear wax is you aren't supposed to use cotton buds in your ears. and there really is no effective way to remove ear wax without a medical personnel's intervention and a $100us per child fee afterwards.

yesterday, the doctor looked at jasper and sela's ears and declared them too full of ear wax to do anything with."too full of wax" he stated. i had the grace to look shamefaced even though i know this is not my fault. but it also gets me wondering....the last doctor i took them to didn't think the wax was a problem. did this massive wax build up just arrive in a surplus special or did the last dr ignore it or??? apparently little lulu's ears weren't so bad and so we did a little hearing test on her which proved that her tube from nose to ear is blocked, not the middle ear, as previously thought.

why is it impossible to get the doctors to agree? instead of feeling like we got somewhere, i feel like we know the kids have an allergy, and instead of furthering testing for a drug, they are exploring a whole new drug. and the allergy is getting worse and worse.

so i am feeling disconcerted. my kids are walking around with bad hearing and no answers as to how we can definitely improve it, and these eggshells i am stepping on are feeling pretty trembly. i just want to help them.

despite the surreal fact that over the next days charles will be visiting three countries (australia, japan and india), life is as normal as it gets. on occasion, jasper will look at sela and say, "poor georgi!" and then carys, remembering, will say, "sela did a poo in her knickers!" sela of course, gets incensed at this propoganda and then screams OVER her siblings "YESTERDAY! I DID A POO IN MY KNICKERS YESTERDAY!"

if they keep haranguing her, she begins sobbing.

it seems to me that my kids cry more than other children.

some people say, "that's because you have four children. of course there are more tears." clever people give a mathematical name to the statistic or formula they use.

but i don't mean that. i am not saying that there is more crying in my house than in other homes, i am saying that my children cry more than other children. per child. not overall.

the kiddies below us are twins. remember tallulah "lulah" and cade? and their baby sister roxie (or in jasper speak, "woxie"?) great. they never cry. believe me, i would know if they did, the walls and ceilings are not great in our building.

but they dont cry. ever.

it's not as if my kids see me crying alot. possibly the crying is a retaliatory move, to repay me for not teaching them to cry. or i could be reading wayyyy too much into this.

it is halfway through november. it is getting frantic. it isn't going to slow down until after chinese new year. have to say i am doing very well on Christmas present shopping, and that makes me v. pleased. i have gotten some great gifts chosen this year!

a friend of ours died last week of cancer. she was a beautiful, caring woman, with struggles, trials, loving friends and family and cancer that may have infected body, but despite it's close proximity, never came close to her heart. she was an inspiration. i would like to see her now, healed at last, and i am already anticipating the day i will.

tomorrow jasper, carys and sela will be seeing an ent specialist to see if they need grommets put in. wish us luck. xo

that DEPENDS

this toilet training bizniz is not thrilling me. today sela did a poo at playgroup and her poor instructor georgi had to clean it up. it was so appalling that sela needed new shoes, pants, shirt and knickers. the only things i had thrown in her backpack were hand sanitiser (which i am sure georgi did appreciate, right??) and a fresh set of knickers. so my child comes home, and she is so cowed in the knowledge that her bowels had behaved badly, that she didn't even remember to complain that she and her sister weren't dressed alike.

when i saw that sela was wearing an entirely different outfit than the one she had left the flat in, several thoughts flashed through my mind:

1) maybe she got wet. yes, that's it....wet.

2) maybe i forgot that she owns that shirt and i forgot that i dressed her in that outfit. happens to the best of us. it has been a v. busy week.

3) dread....(as simultaneously and possibly ironically, my bowels turned to water).

i didn't need to ask, what happened of course, jasper and carys came running up to me.

"sela did a poo at ppa!"

and stupidly, naively and hopefully i inquired, "in the toilet?"

and they screamed happily, "no, in her knickers!"

and then, just a few minutes later, as i was despairing quietly, carys came running up to me...

"mummy, i did a poopers!"

"oh that's just great." i said in a flat voice, and scanned the room looking for the evidence

"in the toilet!" she joyously declared.

and so she had.

let me do my own litmus test...does it seem too boring to share that i am already having to plan our summer holidays? yep, that's boring.

did i mention that the kids have set up their own judicial review system? i guess they were finding hong kong's one country two systems legal sytem even more befuddling than our local legislators do. the other night at the dinner table, sebastian sorrowfully (and reproachfully) mentioned in conversation that,

"annie is going to lita's country for a holiday"

sela, who had not been giving the conversation her whole attention (we were serving green apple curry and sela is very attentive to anything with curry, plus it was her turn with the mickey mouse spoon), suddenly jerked her head up. and commenced bawling. the sela wail. epiglottis trembling, shrieking, grating cries.

what. on. earth. is. the. matter? i inquired gravely yet in a tone that suggested she was behaving inappropriately.

i didn't find out right away, because all of a sudden, jasper laid down his spoon, pointed his finger and said, "straight to the bedroom, sela"

and carys, said, "no, give her a time out!"

and sebastian chimed in, "take away a toy"

these kids seem to believe that they make up a three person jury and are only too happy to dole out appropriate sentences to their peers. there is no solidarity.

yet they are very happy to have each other, because every person provides another scapegoat. for example, the other morning i wandered into their bedroom and smelt a very unwelcome and suspicous odour.

"carys, did you do a poopers in your nappy?"

and she looked right and me and said,

"maybe jayjay."

i turned to her brother, who was lying nearby.

"jasper, did you do a poopers in your nappy?"

"maybe sela."

another quarter turn.

"sela, did you do a poopers in your nappy?"

"maybe carys"

you notice how no one is answering the question, they are simply shrugging it on to the next person? i forget who the perp was, but i do remember that their siblings were very happy to inform me what the crime was and who had done it, like the evidence wasn't visible to my eyes and nose. but no, i had to be told that "---- did a poopers in his/her nappy."

that's usually around the time sebastian slopes into the room and says, "i nevah did a poopahs in my bobs, did i mummy?"

and i say, no you never did.

i'm a better boy than the triplets, aren't i?

hardly.

not a very generous answer, is it?

in case you were wondering what sela was crying about that day at the table, she had thought that sebastian had said that LITA was going on a holiday. SELA is very much LITA's favourite, and having LITA around makes SELA's life much easier and happier. getting carried when the others have to walk, sort of thing. the thought of lita going, in sela's words, "to the phil-pines" was enough to bring on the onslaught of tears, especially as lita had left the room when sebastian made the prophetic statement. i asked lita to come into the room, she did, calm was restored and sela apologised to her siblings.

i thought i was off crack

as you all are aware, young sebastian went to kindy when he was the tender age of 2.5. i popped him on the bus and he sat down, was bucked in and driven away, with adam at his side. we took photos and video that day, and i shed a few tears before racing upstairs to shove bottles into the three vomit-prone mouths that waited there.

today the triplets and their friend tallinn went to their first ever (besides the creche at church) parent or helper unsupervised event: teacher and toddler at the ppa. six kids, one teacher, two hours of playschool in a familiar, fun environment. hooray! i have been so excited thinking about this, wondering if they would cry, wondering how i would deal with it if they did cry, that i forgot to wonder if i would feel sentimental.

my mum asked me on the phone today how i felt about it, in a gentle voice. i squealed back, "ecstatic! can't wait. i just wish they were all doing something at the same time." it would be ideal if the triplets could get into kindergarten with sebastian, but that is unlikely to happen, so these afternoon classes are the next best thing...and did i mention that a parent doesn't have to be with them?

in introducing the kids to the concept of "school" i told them they could each wear a backpack, like the big kids do. they loved this idea. "but mummies don't go to school" i explained. "just big kids".

once at the ppa, tallinn, sela, jasper, and carys hung up their backpacks and took off their shoes (which would soon go on again) and then raced over to the table and began playing with the playdough that was spread out there. after taking them for wees, tara and i looked at each other and realised it was time to go. we explained we were going, and the kids said, "see you later, mummy" and we walked out. they did not watch us leave.

having each other there made it easier for the four of them. and they are used to the ppa and love it there. so yay. but still, not even one of them could squeeze out a tear? a sob, even? whatever.

as we left, i realised i felt not sad, but odd. it felt odd to leave them. they were so grown up.

i love this independence they're displaying, but this is a big step away from me. which is what i wanted. but, wow.

crack goes my heart, as i realise they are ready to explore alone, and are excited to do so. i am proud, excited, and sad.