How I love them so

Taking care of two young kiddies is draining, exhausting work. When J refuses to go brush his teeth (as he does every morning and every night!), when he refuses to turn the TV off, when he doesn't want to take 'no' for an answer at the toy shop, when E wants to be carried ALL the time by me and ONLY me, when she starts screaming and crying when she doesn't get her way, when they both wake me up in the middle of the night, that's when I get really tired out.

And yet...

When J tells me of his own accord, as he did tonight before bedtime, "Mum, you're my darling", when he suddenly turns up right in front of me and gives me a hug, and when E toddles up to me and gives me a kiss most spontaneously, when they both come up to cuddle next to me, that's when I know I've been blessed.

E the drama queen

Update on E.

She's growing fast! Which is something to be grateful for: her appetite seems to have improved in the past couple of weeks, and she's eating much better than she used to. That's the good news. There are days when I just can't seem to scoop up the food fast enough for her. The not so good news is that she's still quite a messy eater, usually leaving a ring of destruction around her highchair. She still has the tendency to spit out, either because she doesn't like the taste of what's in her mouth; or because she sees something else that she'd rather have in her mouth, so spitting out the food inside her mouth clears the way faster; or simply because there's too much inside her mouth, and it all has to go somewhere. Sometimes she even just digs the food out of her mouth, takes a looks at it, and then promptly stuffs it back into her mouth. *Sigh* So mealtimes at home usually ends up with one of us vacuuming the floor around her chair.

Did you know that she's quite the drama queen too? The moment she bumps herself anywhere, regardless of whether is a hard bump or just a gentle brush, she'll fuss and tell us by putting up her hand on her head. Very drama. My mum found this very apt t-shirt for her when we were in Hollywood. Just need to wait for her to grow into it!

E loves playing with balls. Whenever we're in a toy shop, she ALWAYS heads for the balls and asks us to take them down for her to play with. Here she is playing below in a part of the Claremont colleges, when K took the kids out for a walk one day. She can play rugby one ok. You should see how she protects the ball.

She has lots of spunk for her size though, and she can get really fierce when she doesn't get what she wants. The kids were dipping their hands in a water fountain today, and when K said it was time to go, she put up a huge struggle, kicking and crying, and then promptly bit him for taking her away from the water. I don't fear that she'll get bullied in school in the future. She kicks, pulls and tries to bite J when they fight over toys!

J and cars

A couple of weekends ago, the Village Grill (an all-American diner located in the Village, the Claremont town centre) organised a vintage car festival. We stumbled on it quite by accident. Did J get a kick out of looking at the cars. He was very happy to pose for the camera with the cars!

Even I have to admit the cars were pretty cool.

Oh, and a postscript to our trip to Disney's California Adventure (pictures from my parents' camera): J meeting Lightning McQueen and Mater! He was thrilled!

Chinese San Gabriel

K's brother arrived yesterday evening, bearing two tins of milk powder for the kids. For some reason, they only have milk powder for infants here, so I guess once you're past the age of one, you just drink fresh milk. Even packet milk's been harder to find, and quite expensive too.





We took a drive to San Gabriel today, about half an hour away. A Chinese enclave! The moment we turned out onto the main street, there were Chinese words on signboards. We found a great Asian supermarket, with seafood that looked really fresh, and Chinese medical halls, where I bought dried wolfberries (and where they also sell fish maw, sea cucumber and ginseng, among other things). San Gabriel's well known for its mission, set up in 1771 by Franciscan monks.



We had dim sum for lunch at a great Chinese restaurant, so far that best we've had, called Mission 261; it was rated one of the best Chinese restaurants in Southern California. We'll be back there again, I think.



Yesterday, I fell a little ill quite suddenly. Just had a splitting headache and felt so nauseated, I couldn't eat anything at all. Finally felt better only after I threw up. K was really great to watch the kids, and take them out so that I could get some rest. Thank God, I'm better today.

Our home revisited

Since y'all can't come over, I thought I'd let you take a peek at our home...

Living room - yes, that's J watching Thomas the Tank Engine, rented here.

K got the kids a tent to play in, it's sitting in our living room right now- an indoor tent.

Dining area

Kids' room

Some other pretty flowers growing in the backyard

Some admin stuff: For those of you who want to leave a comment, I've removed the need to login, but I'll still be moderating comments, just so I can make sure no one leaves anything nasty on the blog. When you type in a comment, it'll come in to my email first so that I can choose either to publish or reject it. So there'll be a delay between when you leave a comment, and when it appears on the blog, just cos I'll have to manually opt to publish it.

PS. I'm actually surprising myself with how regularly and often I'm putting up posts on the blog. Patting myself on the back.

What we miss the most

K: Friends, the youth at church, playing the piano and teh-si.



F: My parents! They're on their way back to Singapore as I type this. We had to have quite a hurried goodbye at the airport, cos J was getting quite upset. Poor thing. He understands loss now. Almost everyone was in tears. Friends. CBC.



J (in his own words): Tampines Mall, Parkway Parade, Ah-ma and Kong-kong, and my BMW car.

For these I am thankful

When I don't know what to say
I will speak praise to You

These words that we sang in one of the songs during worship today at church resonated with me.


With our move to Claremont, trying to get settled down, and getting the house all set up, it's been quite a busy hive of activity almost everyday so far. And in all my busy-ness, it's been hard for me to figure where to start when I pray. I have requests to put before God for all of us, and at the same time, there are many things to be thankful for.


A few nights ago, we made some changes to the kids' sleeping arrangements. We had initially put J in a room by himself and E with us (while my parents took the last remaining bedroom). It was quite hard on J though I think - he didn't do well being in a new room by himself - quite insecure and whiny. So what we did a few nights ago was to put both of them in a room together. Last night was their third night in the same room, and for the first time since we've been here, they both slept through the night. No crying, no looking for me. A gift. For this I am very thankful.


While J's been having a great time with exploring a new place, he's been acting up much more than he did at home. We've had to deal with quite a bit of cranky-ness, temper tantrums, stubbornness. It's been quite tiring dealing with this, to say the least. I figure it's the change of environment, which has maybe led to him feeling a bit more insecure. So: I'm praying over him and E as I wait for them to sleep at night. And just waiting it out. Since starting the prayers, there've been small improvements; he's a little less quick to launch into a full-blown tantrum. Small step, but for this I am thankful too.



Today was our second Sunday at church here. A big thanksgiving: both J and E seem to have settled into their respective Sunday Schools quite easily. They both have different rooms to go to, both filled with all manner of toys. J ran right in today, didn't even have to look back to say bye to me. E took some persuasion, but spent quite a while there before she started to look for me. Just the fact that she was willing to be there without me, for any amout of time, was pretty amazing to me. The Sunday School teachers have been great so far, really welcoming to the kids. Even suggesting preschools for J, which we'll look into later.

My parents leave for home tomorrow, after being here for close to three weeks. They've been a great help, with watching the kids, keeping them occupied, and even fixing up parts of the house for us. For them I am thankful. I'll miss them.

For K and the kids, I am most thankful!

(PS. Aren't they just the cutest?!)

5 servings of fruits and vegetables

One of the great things about being here, at least for me, is the farmers' markets that I get to explore regularly. Some spoils from today's trip out to the Pomona (a neighbouring town) farmers' market.



Other things that I've managed to buy, but didn't have time/opportunity to take pics of: apple chips, apple juice, zucchini, xiao bai chai, kai lan, fresh shitaake mushrooms, multi-grain bread. All organic!

E is a vegetarian by nature. She loves her fruits and is game to give anything a try, so long as they fall under the catergory of fruits or vegetables. Meat, she's not so keen on, although she did eat quite a bit of fried chicken at a gathering for international students from K's school last night. More often than not, she spits out her meats. E does seem to share J's love for mushrooms. J, on the other hand, is more of a carnivore. He refuses to try any and all fruits. Scrunches up his nose, shakes his head, and runs away. Fast.

Organic apple juice is amazing. Much much tastier than the store-bought kind. I'd choose organic juice any day. Oh, but of course, more expensive. Sigh. Can't have it perfect.

Not a vacation

For me at least, it's been hard to remember that our time here isn't a vacation. It's certainly seemed like one so far, hasn't it? We've been travelling and shopping like tourists over the past couple of weeks; my parents being here for just under three weeks has helped that impression since we're also trying to bring them around. They'll be going back home on Monday though. Then I expect things to fall into more of a normal routine after that. We haven't looked into getting J into a school, mainly because we wanted him to get used to being in a new place. But maybe we should get that going soon. We did come across gymnastics classes for kids his age, and when I explained that he'd be able to jump, run and bounce, you can imagine how keen he was!

K's classes have started and he's slowly getting back into the groove of being a student. Homework and readings have begun. His workload now isn't too bad, but it'll get tougher in the fall. Even then, it's hard getting all his readings done with two boisterous kids running around the house, so I hope to be able to bring the kids out to the parks a bit more now that the weather is getting warmer gradually. Give K a bit more time and space to get his work done.

San Diego

We're back from our first road-trip! We left for San Diego on Sunday morning and returned home Tuesday late afternoon, just in time for K to attend his class in the evening. It was a packed couple of days. As you'll be able to see, I did NOT forget the camera this time! Here are just some highlights.



First stop - La Jolla, where we got to see seals lounging on the beach, at a little cove called Children's Pool (it used to be for the kids to wade in the water, before the seals took over). Very cool, figuratively and literally - the sea wind is freezing cold. We lunched at a cafe called the Cottage - very yummy. You'll have to take my word for it, cos I didn't manage to get any pictures. The food looked so good, we just dug in straightaway. Who has time to take out the camera?

We spent Sunday afternoon at Balboa Park. J was a very happy camper because he got to do all he loved - riding on a miniature train (which was built in the 1940s, I think), riding on the carousel and playing in front of a fountain. Check out his big grins!

And in the evening, just before dinner (at The Fish Market), we got to look at an aircraft carrier. The boys were, naturally, fascinated.

Monday was spent at SeaWorld, which was fantastic. A few firsts - feeding dolphins (not cheap, ok. Each tray of fish cost US$5; there were FOUR fish only!), getting to see the Shamu show (a little bit cheesy at times, but still pretty amazing), getting to see walruses and beluga whales up close.

You can see J feeding the dolphins above - he actually picked up a little dead fish to throw into the dolphin's mouth! So proud of him. In the middle picture above, E just turned around to catch a walrus' belly as it did a dive right up against the glass. The sight of that thing made her scramble, I'll tell you that. Quite funny to see her scurry off. *grin* J's taking a close-up look at a beluga whale in the pic below.

Our last day was spent at the famous San Diego Zoo - you can imagine how excited J was. Naturally, his favourite exhibit was the elephants. He also loved the cable car, and wanted to keep going on it. Unfortunately, E had just fallen asleep, so she missed out on this one.

By far the most hilarious moment of the trip: while visiting the panda enclosure, we had told J that he had to be quiet so as not to scare the pandas. But even after leaving the pandas, he kept insisting that we all had to be quiet and would shush us if we tried to talk. We had no choice! So there he was creeping up on the different exhibits, where he would suddenly shout or scream cos he was just too excited to contain himself when he saw the different animals. Unfortunately, at one of the exhibits, a little old lady didn't notice him creeping up, until he was right behind her, when he let out a blood-curdling, at-the-top-of-his-lungs scream: "Bird!!!!!". The poor lady got such a big fright, she said J almost sent her to heaven too early. I tell you, we're still laughing about it now.

J didn't want to come home... When he realised that we were nearing home, he kept insisting on going back to San Diego to make his home there...

I personally felt SeaWorld was the most impressive, maybe just because the animals that they had there were a little more unusual. I mean, dolphins, killer and beluga whales, walruses and manatees don't pop up in any old zoo. How awesome is God, that He made them all.