Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

in the past few days i have had arguments with just about everyone under my roof.

sebastian and i are having our annual christmas carol quarrel. the source: "we wish you a merry Christmas". the composer of this song is unknown, probably because he/she knew i would be cussing him/her out in centuries to come.

here is the heart of the argument. sebastian is lustily and off key singing:

....good tidings we bring...

what are tidings mummy?

they're happy wishes. like when you say happy birthday.

oh okay.

.....good tidings we bring, to you and your king....

um, sebastian my love, it is actually good tidings we bring to you and your kin

no mummy, bring and kin don't rhyme. it is king.

kin means family, did you know that sebastian!

bring and king rhyme.

the discussion is apparently over, because sebastian recommences his song with vigour,

good tidings we bring, to you and your king

shooting me a glance at the appropriate word.

the thing is, he does have a point.

jasper got upset with me because i asked him to either learn the rest of the song or stop singing the two lines he knows of:

in a thtable

in a manger

and even though i put the wiggles (what else) video on for him so he could learn the rest of the song, he flounced away.

carys and sela are cross with mummy because i didn't let them wear high heels to school today.

you're wearing mummy shoes! they cried accusingly, sela even pointing a chubby finger.

"yes, and what am i?" hoping the answer would naturally lead to MUMMY....and should it not have?

but instead...what came from the mouths of babes.

"QUITE MEAN!" cried sela and carys chimed in, "i am bebe's mummy and sela is sponge bob's mummy. we're mummies!"

charles and i haven't quarrelled, but i expect we will before the Christmas season ends.

i'm stunned to report that this year at tree decorating i was able to have a completely laissez-faire attitude toward the lacklustre decorating style of the kids. after cheering me on as i strung lights around the tree (go mummy go!) i held out ornaments, and their little scratchy nails scraped against my palm as they grabbed, turned, then scrambled back to the tree, where they placed the ornament wherever their frantic little hands could reach.

and the only ornaments i have moved are those that have fallen to the ground. and i don't mean ornaments that i pull off a branch, wink wink nudge nudge, drop to the ground and say, "oh! an ornament has fallen!i guess this means i must move it to another location where it fits the symmetry of the tree!"

so our poor tree is as bottom heavy as salma hayek in late pregnancy. but like salma, the tree (and kids) don't care. they think it is a gorgeous tree. and it is quite cute in a laughing sort of way. and if you could see the gorgeously handmade and loving ornaments the kids are bringing home, then you know a haphazard tree is the only way to go right now.

i am also exceptionally proud that yesterday when we did gingergbread houses, i was able to let the kids loose. i didn't even act as an advisor. i monitored how many m&m's went in their wretched pie holes, but that is it. for 2007 gingerbread homestyle and living, sebastian and carys squared off against sela and jasper.

it was very interesting, because magnificent suddenly got competitive. he was supervising the carys/sebastian team, and exited into the kitchen, and returned a few seconds later, turning himself away from me. normally this man positions his bottom very close to my hand, desperate for a chance at a bum rub. yet he was, no other day to say this, avoiding me.

why? the journalist in me inquired.

obviously there was a reason. what was it.

i wrestled him and we made such a commotion the kids actually stopped eating m&m's.

would you believe it? he had smuggled in some red icing in an attempt to create a more Christmassy look on "his" gingerbread house.

taking the high road, i shrugged. "i'm just letting the kids do their own thing" i said, removing a jelly baby from jasper's mouth and giving it to sela who placed it on the house. (it stuck).

"you can't" he stated. "you're tess!"

this was of course exactly what i needed, a challenge to re-direct my competitive streak.

"just watch me" i sniffed.

so the sela/jasper gingerbread house is ridiculous, with indents of m&m's placed and then picked off the roof as greed got the best of home decor. they had a fun time and i haven't once mentioned that the house has no windows. their house is hilarious, but not nearly as hilarious as my dear husband's. why you enquire? well, the red icing fell into the hands of sebastian, who decided it looked like red spiderweb, and thus, put the suggestion to his very agreeable sister that their house be covered in "red web". it looks like spiderman bled out of his costume and charles was as sick as a parrot.

ha!

triplet pics

pictures of the triplets at their small world christian kindergarten christmas plays can be found over at charles' blog.

10 reasons why lita and i should be reunited

yes, anyone (note i didn't say i) can clean a house. most people can successfully seal a baby's two lower orifices with a nappy.

so why should lita and i be reunited?

read on:

10. i miss her sarcasm.

9. i saw her husband yesterday and can tell he is missing her a great deal

8. de isn't getting enough good food. he is only eating cup noodles and 7-11 sandwiches at odd times of the day. back in the old days when they lived with us, she cooked both of us outstanding meals

7. calgary is very cold. what if lita gets frostbite and her fingers and toes freeze off? she has very nice, long fingers.

6. she is going to be away from de and baby melissa for Christmas. and me for that matter. what good is snow if you don't have someone to throw it at?

5. no one tells me things about playground life anymore. i was virtually the last to learn that 20a are moving out of the building

4. when i try to give a pair of shoes to anyone else, they laugh and say, "oh, my feet aren't nearly that big!"

3. lita agreed with me when the kids were being appalling

2. where she is living she is dependent on public transportation, which comes once every 45-60 minutes. very different from hong kong where she could/did walk everywhere or take the bus!

and lastly, to quote "red" from the shawshank redemption, (not that i see my life as a prison)...

1. i miss my friend

jasthper the thepard

"i only like "away in the manger"" confessed my youngest son today, as i asked him why he only sang one of the songs in his Christmas pageant.

what can you say when faced with that logic?

the pageant was very sweet, very fun and extremely endearing. i could go on and on, but really, only pictures will do and i hope to post some soon, as well as a video so you can hear jasper belting out his lines in his in his deep gravelly voice.

despite mourning the loss of my team being uncermoniously removed from the amazing race monday evening, i met a friend for coffee yesterday.  she works in sales and marketing for a beauty company and is quite high up in the austral-asia region.

we are friendish, and she has pursued the relationship, which intrigues me because when we are together she doesn't laugh or smile a lot at anything i say. she's a very attractive girl, vietnamese, with pale skin and these days, long hair with a fringe.

i confessed about the addition of face cream to my cabinet and she looked up at me and deadpan and  said, "how do you think i feel? since i was a little girl, my mother told me not to smile too much or i would get lines. so i don't smile."

can you imagine not smiling for fear of getting laugh lines? trading in beauty for joy? yes, you can let your eyes laugh, but this girl's eyes are often sad. what else did her mum tell her i wonder? what else did she sacrifice for beauty?

i was collecting sebastian from school later on in the day and as he galloped down the stairs he was waving a white envelope in the air. i realised they were his school pictures! how wildly exciting! we followed what many other mums were doing: we quickly sat down and examined them, picture after picture of smiling sebastian. idential images. we looked at the class photo.

it was warm outside, the sun shining down. as sebastian's little finger tapped each classmate and he said, "he's a friend, he's a friend, she's a friend and she's at my table, she's a friend..." i wondered,

in a world like this, with a life like mine, how can we not get lines? with the sun on my shoulders, the child that causes my heart to contract with anxiety smiling and relaxed in my arms as he determines that today, everyone in his class is his friend, when i am surrounded by people who care for me, how can i not grin and be glad for my world?

i will continue to slap on the face cream, a reactive non-cure to my lines - and God and my perspective willing, i will not stop smiling.

they don't stay babies

we've just returned from an afternoon in the playground.

it's getting to be quite a regular sunday afternoon event, tea, beer, biscuits and snacks, bicycles, doll prams, playing, standing, sitting, baby prams.

there are two new babies in the playground - ingrid and oliver. both mums are third time round mums with children aged 6 and 4, so it is interesting to watch their children's reactions to the new sibling.

today, ingrid woke up and i decided i should give her a bit of a cuddle. she's a lovely little thing, and so fun to cuddle. very easy baby, especially when you can hand her off. but let's put it this way, she didn't vomit on me, so i didn't get any real flashbacks to almost four years ago. and she wasn't covered in tubes and tape either.

i gently smacked her back and fell into the swinging rhythm that you never forget, and katie said, "oh charles, come take a look at your gorgeous wife." and charles wandered over and said, "oh i know." and he gave me a kiss and admired ingrid and then oliver. i held ingrid probably for a good 30 minutes when:

suddenly sela was at my side. "why are you holding baby ingrid?" she asked. she has seen me holding ingrid before, but never for such a prolonged period of time.

"to help her mummy." i answered.

and sela didn't leave my side. she held my leg and circled round it, she leaned against me, she kept asking me questions.

i asked a fellow dweller if she wanted to have a go holding baby ingrid. "oh, no thanks. makes me broody."

i thought about broody-ness as i trotted into the flat, my little ducks in a row behind me.

"ingrid is a very sweet baby, and i like holding other people's babies, but that is as far as it goes." i said in a voice that could only be called definite.

"really?" he said, in a voice that could only be categorized as nostalgic.

"YES" i replied. "they don't stay babies forever, charles. do you really want to go through sibling rivalry, and a two year old, a three year old, car seats, nappies, baby food in ice trays all over again?"

he didn't answer, and i know that he would not be upset and would actually be delighted if yes, we did go through that all over again.

and yes, i spoke more definitely than i sometimes feel, but honestly, someone has to be sensible.

right?

 

Sebastian's Birthday Party cont...

Please visit Charles' blog for pictures of Sebastian's birthday party.

so the shiny stuff you see from our flat? don't get excited and talk about how prepared i am for Christmas because baby, that's not tinsel.

it is strings of goo hanging from my tonsils.

a trip to the hospital confirmed it: tonsillitis, ear infections in both ears and a chest infection.

i was expecting to get a severe ticking off for "using the ER as a drs office" but instead when i explained my schedule and said i had been feeling like this on and off for three weeks, the dr got all severe and said, "you should have come in before"

i misunderstood and meekly said, "most doctors offices shut down at 5pm and these last few weeks have been quite busy for me during those hours."

the doctor said, "we are open 24 hours."

so i am feeling 50 per cent better than i did yesterday, but as my friend sheri puts it, i'm still 95 per cent away from being healthy.

last night was bad. there was a lineup of people waiting to get x-rays and all of them had more serious conditions than i did. i was so tired and sore that i counted the time i sat in my chair (furthest away from air conditioning) and counted the number of times i swallowed. (14 in 60 minutes). swallowing hurt like the dickens.

when i finally got my prescription, i took my first two drugs at the pharmacy. it was 6.20pm. i went home, and slept for one hour and then stayed up the rest of the night. i found myself wide awake and in pain at 3pm, counting down the hours until i could take my next dosage of antibiotics. to kill time i watched the nanny from 5-6pm and at 6:00:01 i swallowed the pills with 8oz of juice.

why didn't i go to the dr earlier? i guess mainly because charles was sicker. how would it have looked if the less sick person went to the doctor (sensible & taking care of self are suddenly coming to mind but i will ignore them) but also, at times i seemed to be getting better.

but, the drugs in the system and soon very soon, the mucous vines will be off my tonsils. i swear tarzan could swing off these things.

time for bed.

this week is a frantic one. i am organising the kennedy night market book stall and thankfully the books keep flowing in (yay), but it does take a lot of time organising them, especially when you have slightly anal retentive tendencies.

as well, i am busy helping a friend all day tomorrow.

i have a deadline for tatler hong kong thursday but i need to get it done tonight.

and friday, our church is hosting a Christmas dinner for nepalese refugees in hong kong.  i cannot be there to serve because i will be at the kennedy night market selling books, so i offered to make 60 dessert pieces.

i needed a fast dessert, and so today, my mum offered me a great one. she read the recipe to me, and i jotted it down, and we moved on to other topics.

today i purchased the tough to find ingredients. after the kids were (FINALLY, did someone say that??) in bed, i started with the recipe. it called for eight cups of sugar.

eight cups. that's quite a bit, i thought but kept on pouring and trying to make the butter and sugar "Creamy". sandy was as close as i could get.

it was too early to call yellowknife to double check, so i just made the recipe. it smelt lovely, but by the time they were in the oven...they weren't baking so well. so i called my mum. woke her up i suspect. and she re-read me the recipe.

somehow, her reading two cups of sugar became me writing 8 cups of sugar.

how? how?

why didn't i figure it out sooner?

i tipped them all into the bin and tried not to cry. this week has a shortage of hours, and i just duffed up an evening.

it took me halfway through the amazing race to recover. my tonsils, i suspect no amount of gargling ever will. and i need to stop cheering & gasping when incredulous things happen on the amazing race.

then charles called. he is so tired and jetlagged. all he wants is to get home and relax. he is sick as well. sadly, there's no relaxation here, baby! there are obligations, whether parties or kids events or just spending time with kids. he knows that, he just wants to dream. i hope he doesn't unclasp the lock of his laptop once.

just a few more days, to tote the weary load. monday, i have offered to fold some second hand clothes, but i will take the afternoon "off". oh, it will be blissful.

i'm trying to convince myself that i wouldn't be all dumb like this if i were not sick.

y'think?