The last days

These are the last days. 5 more days before I meet my 2nd little darling. From her scans, I know she's going to be bigger than Maeve at birth, chubbier, with chipmunk like cheeks and pouty lips. I can't wait to meet her, and her big sis is getting mighty impatient. Thankfully, Maeve has stopped demanding to perform a C section on me! (for a whole month, she would come at me with her plastic knife and ask permission to cut my tummy to take Paige out!) 5 more days of rest, of long chats with hubby, of painfree non-leaking boobs. Soon, the house will be a whirlwind of activities, of feeding, of diaper changing (thank goodness I have to only deal with one bum now, since Maeve trained herself off her nighttime diaper some weeks ago..I can't imagine having to do double diaper duty!), and strangely, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to meeting my 2nd little miracle, the one that God surprised us with, the one that we pray God will use mightily for His service. Paige, I'll see you really soon!

Hormones and emotions

Today was a day with great emotions unleashed, that is, I cried 3 times. I think the last time I did something as dramatic as this was when I was in actual pain in hospital. I wasn't in pain today though, at least not the physical kind. It started in the morning when an old neighbour asked me (for the 3rd time) if I'm expecting a boy. I told her no, it was a girl, and she had the audacity to console me, saying it was all fate, that I could try again! I mustered up all graciousness in me to tell her thank you, but both hubby and I prefer daughters and that daughters tend to be closer to their parents when they grow up. She looked at me with great pity and said (I can't believe this woman), well, its all fated, I'm still young, I can still try for a son!!! Is this woman for real??!! This time, given we were botht trapped for a while in the lift, I became rather unchristian. I told her that sons won't care so much about their parents the way daughters would and most would take a daughter anytime. Daughters won't dump their children on their parents the whole week and turn up only for visits. (Which is exactly the plight of this grandmother who looks after her grandson all day, all night, all weekday, all weekend). I wasn't proud of myself, but the grace took a backseat to vindictiveness. Of course, i went home to cry. Not only because of her callous words, but also the callousness of every single aunty I've encountered from the lift to the supermarket who all give me looks of pity and words of consolation when I tell them I'm expecting a baby girl, AND I've got an older girl. What is wrong with these women?? Old men are not like that. If women discriminate against their own kind, what hope do we have in the world?

The 2nd instance happened when my preschooler came home from school and for reasons only known to the 3 year old set, started ranting and raving at me and even holding up a pebble and aiming it at me. I don't even know or remember what caused the fury,except that she was on the war path. My usual reaction would be to calmly tell her the behaviour was unacceptable and she would stay in the corner till she was prepared to apologise for that bit of nonsense. Well, I did put her in the corner, but I also burst into tears, heartbroken that she behaved in such a fashion. She was shocked and I think a little frightened, which caused an outpouring of apology and genuine contriteness, and of course, a scurrying around for tissues and whatever was needed to make mummy less sad. In the end my little one decided that the best course of action was to climb into my lap and cry with me. After which we both felt much better!

Finally, at night, a call came that threw my plans out of whack. I was REALLY angry and due to the poor planning of this person, everyone else was inconvenienced. I did what my daughter did earlier on, I threw a tantrum. I hurled angry accusations at hubby for not handling the situation better and being firm. Of course, the angrier I got, the greater chance of those tears being unleashed again. Once again, angry tears sprouted as I growled, petulant and spoilt. Hubby, already weary and beyond exhausted asked me calmly if I would like him to call said person to scold her. Believe it or not, I actually said yes! So he called and calmly settled the matter ( at least for today, as said person can sing a different tune again tomorrow). There is a part of me that says, think, there is a solution, just logically think. However, the logic bit appears to be off duty today and the emotional part is handling the control tower. So intead of giving way to another crying bout, I've decided to unleash those runaway emotions in this entry. Typing helps me keep my cool. You can't reflect when you are awashed with emotion.

I guess this is probably due to the crazy pregnancy hormones. I've never had this while pregnant with Maeve, but I hear it is common in the 1st and 3rd trimester. I guess this season too is fleeting and will pass, hopefully sooner than later, before more people get to witness this other side of me that very few, if ever, see.

another dress

The wonderful thing about 3 year olds is that they are willing to wear just about anything you make, so I'm capitalising on it now! I'm sure give a couple of years, she'll not want to be caught dead in a home made dress! So introducing my little model....the dresses are made from grandma's discarded pillowcases!

Nesting

I've suddenly gotten a spurt of energy and must channel it somewhere, so I decided to do the convent girl thing. I started sewing! With a machine that went bust a few years ago, churning out too many costumes for a whacky teacher's day musical, I have only my good ol hands to do the job. The inspiration came as I couldn't find a chinese new year dress that i liked enough to buy for Maeve, so decided to make one.



While on a roll, I decided Paige deserved something too, so made her a cutsey top using a hand me down singlet. And while at it, made Maeve a matching bag too! Something to put her Ang Pows!

9 months

The thing with carrying a larger foetus is one gets beached a little earlier. When carrying Maeve, i worked till 38 weeks or something like that and was runnning up and down stairs, sitting on floors in the studio and bouncing back up. Now with a rather large Paige, my earlier gymnastics have been curtailed very early (or maybe its just age catching up) and at 35 weeks, i find myself unable to do the simplest things without feeling like I've run a marathon. I can't get up from the floor easily (which means no jigsaws with Maeve), i can't play dress-up and run around the house without keeling over, i can't even shower my little one as i can't bend very well...which hence makes my helper playmate extraodinaire and me, the useless beached whale stuck to the sofa. Thankfully, my little darling has been taking it in her stride with no accusations of "mummy can't do anything" but rather, with sensible instructions of "mummy, put your legs up".

I'm grateful for the sweet and understanding little girl my baby has become. While I nest and buzz about putting baby things to wash, packing tiny booties and mitts, sewing new pillow cases, my grown up 3 yr old has been helping around the house, changing toilet rolls when necessary, putting clothes to wash, setting the table every meal and just yesterday, helping me to clean up the cot and change table without prompting. I only hope and pray that she continues to be the angel she is now and not regress when Paige arrives (as I've heard older siblings tend to do).

chinese oral

We've (okay, I) have been industriously reading chinese story books to my little one in the hope that she'll be able to be bilingual/won't fail kinder-chinese. So far, while the little lass is keen, she is none too impressed with my reading capabilities, which goes something like blah blah blah..skip, blah, skip, blah..blah, skip etc.so obviously, the story doesn't make any sense and i get regular heart palpitations and awful flashbacks of chinese oral exams. Little one rolls her eyes at me (she knows) and says, "mummy, the pause means you don't know the word right? Shall we ask someone else to read it instead?" The cheek!

Had an emergency conference with my long-suffering chinese tutor (who had to endure me for 7 years of her life while I pawed my way to a pass) who reminded me that i will kill all love for the language the way i was going. "just look at a picture book without chinese words and talk about it!" says the wise one. Theoretically, that sounds good and even doable, for me! But in reality, when little wise-ass asks, "what's this mummy?", what's that?" and points to a gazillion things on the page which for the love of God, i have no vocabulary for, i still break out in cold sweat. Despite this, I persist. Hubby on the other hand, smiles warily and tells me, "don't worry, there's chinese B, besides she only needs chinese if she's in a local school. who knows where we'll be in a few years."

I soldier on because I don't want my children to suffer what I've suffered, that is, to actually have recurrent nightmares of chinese spelling, dictation, oral, and I do so because, some part of me, actually likes the language (although my love for it is sadly unrequited). So next time you hear Maeve trying out mandarin, don't say she sounds ang moh ok?

New year, new beginnings

Here's to the new year
New hopes
New dreams
New life
New challenges

Today was the first day of school. My baby went on the school bus for the first time (we made this decision so that I won't have to juggle a new born AND be chauffeur next month) and a little part of me wept. She looked so small climbing up the gigantic steps of the school bus, but she was bursting with excitement as we've been talking it up for 2 weeks. The send-off party/cheerleading squad consisted of hubby and I, the grandparents, as well as our neigbours who happened to be downstairs. so one kid on the bus, 6 adults clapping hands!

Today was a wonderful day otherwise, as hubby was off work, so we could trot downtown for lunch and spend the time making new year resolutions. I've resolved to print it out this time and paste it in our room. who knows which notebook we wrote last year's resolutions on! and its anyone's guess WHAT those resolutions are. I've pared mine down to a simple one that covers pretty much everything.

Be a better home manager.

I realise that my life is chaotic because I'm way way too lassez-faire about everything. Everything happens too spontaneously. Run out of milk? Go to NTUC now before breakfast. What to do in the evening? How about the library? It kinda throws everything out of whack when no one has a clue what's going to happen day to day, hour to hour and the little one's bed time is whenever I've persuaded her to go to her room. What this all means is, for 2010, I'm going to put myself and my family on some sort of schedule/time-table so that everyone knows what on earth's going on and we can be flexible within that schedule. it makes it easier for little Paige (yes, that's going to be her name) to fit into our routine. That will also ensure that Maeve has the right balance of outdoor activity daily (cycling, scooting, swimming etc) as well as some quiet indoor ones (puzzles, blocks, painting, play- pretend), as well as some, *drum roll* Mandarin time! So the deal is she gets one hour of immersion from 8-9pm in this language (flash cards, music, videos, games, plain ol conversation with her linguistically challenged mother). God help me! Then daddy takes over to do the bed time routine and i'm off duty for the day! Which explains why i can update this blog today at a sane hour.

Tomorrow I'm going to start doing up a time table which the whole family can refer to and hopefully stick to, and start planning more nutritous meals that don't include ice-cream after dinner and cake for supper. yes, sugar-ladened food will only appear on sunday. let's see how i long i can keep to this.