Dragon Baby Party

It’s the year of the dragon and we decided to celebrate our dragon babies now that their big brothers and sisters are all settled into school routines. Amongst my friends from church there will be eleven dragon babies before the Chinese New Year in February. Seven are here already and four more on the way. We had a great lunch and nursing party at my place yesterday and I pulled out all my dragon decorations I had picked up around the Chinese New Year last January. (When Jacob got home and saw the many bright red and gold lanterns hanging all over the ceiling, the zodiac strand and other traditional décor his mouth dropped open and he said, “It’s just too beautiful in here mom!”

 

Babies left to right:

Logan, Ashlyn, Aliya, Anika, Cybil, Luciana, Tyler

 

Tummies left to right:

Naomi, Kristy, Jen, Laura

 

Henna tummy: The Fabulous Kristy. Isn’t that the coolest idea? Kids wanted the baby to get some too so they did!

 

 

Deadlines

I feel like I'm back in high school again. I am sprinting through my life this last while especially. I dash from kid drop off to play with Ashlyn during her morning awake hour. When she gets tired I feed her while I check email on my phone or listen to scriptures be read to me on my phone. As soon as she nods off I start my mental one hour timer. That's all the free time u get in a day. I need to arrange doctor appointments, pay bills, manage our real estate business stuff, return phone calls to the US before businesses close, sew the buttons on the blessing dress before Ashlyn's photo shoot, figure out a way to make Maddie's new glasses work with her patches and fix the old ones back to normal shape with two pairs of pliers, cub scout registration data inputting, clean the house for a dragon baby party at my house today, find a room for us to meet in at the school for our girl scout troop, plan the parent coffee for the third grade class, attend the PTA meeting, get a massage because my body hurts so bad it's painful to walk, sit or stand.

After that's all taken care of in 60 minutes or less I have to run to pickup Jacob (and often a neighbor or two) from preschool. That counts as my exercise for the day because it's a mile in the Singapore heat and humidity. When we get home walking at preschool speed accommodating for his short little legs he is usually. Ready for lunch. Then he is totally exhausted. He asks me to snuggle him on the couch and read him books which is. Exactly what he needs because hrs snotty and has a little cough and wants nothing more than to be in my arms. Usually it takes until about 2:15 for him to give into his body and fall asleep. That leaves me again a teensy tinsey window of 15 minutes to start and finish a task before my 2:30 alarm to go walk back to the school for the third time in the day to pick up my Maddie Mae.

Maddie is a social gal and what she needs most is to giggle and run with her friends to destress. So we stay for a while, usually until I know I need to hurry home and feed Ashlyn again if I didn't bring her in the stroller.

Home brings me my Ben waiting for a snack and I initiate the homework routine to begin. He initiates the "It's too hard" whine noises. When we finally finish for the day Ashlyn seems to need feeding while Jacob needs more snuggles after waking groggy from his nap.

Then we tidy up toys and set the table for dinner. Say my prayer of gratitude that at least I didn't have to cook a meal too in all this mayhem.

I'm feeling so frantic this week. Last week I made progress in the mess. This week I undid any progress I had previously made as I blew through the house dropping this bag of gear and grabbing the next one to rush away again. Today should be bad and then Friday is mine without any extra meetings or appointments.

I wonder sometimes but I don't think I've over committed myself really. I think it's just a really busy time this month. Cross you fingers and say a prayer with me that I'm right! I'm just hating deadlines and pressure today because I'm getting emails like crazy asking if I got this and that done. The answer is unfortunately, "NO." It's not because I forgot. I just haven't got to it yet. It's on the list. Now it's 4:00am and I think I'll just go start on the list because I can't sleep because my brain won't shut off with To Do list running through it and even getting it out in this blog post hasn't settled me. Good morning world. Here I come!

Naked Season

I think it must be naked season here in Singapore. Today I saw a guy I honestly though was naked. Turns out us was wearing nothing but flesh colored shorts while he watered his garden plants - in the rain I might add.
Saturday we were walking home from the school after cub scout registration and I saw a guy sitting at a patio table he drug out of his yard to the edge of the street. There he sat, legs up on another chair naked, private zone mostly covered by the table top, smoking a cigarette. I did a HORRIFIED double take and thankfully discovered he too was wearing small flesh colored shorts.
Yuck. Double yuck. There ought to be a rule against wearing flesh colored shorts!

I'm Lost!

Ashlyn updates galore today. She is a champion roller, flip flopping left then all the way back and onto the right.
With the big kids gone to school and the great new carpet with padding in the living room she has been napping on her blanket on the floor. When she wakes up she rolls herself all around the room but sometimes she gets all twisted up in her blanket. She patiently lays there without a sound. I imagine in my mind she is contemplating and calculating how to get out of her predicament. Eventually she starts rolling again and randomly wiggles her way free.

The Mouse

Jacob finished playing computer games today and was so great about tidying up after he was done. Then he said something that made me laugh while he wound the cord around the computer mouse.

"Mom, I'm twirling up the mouse so it won't run away."

Sitting

We are also practicing sitting. She's not too far off from being independent. We got a new carpet just in time!

Ashlyn's Feet

I introduced Ashlyn to her feet today. One of my favorite things babies to is eat their own feet. She thought it was the most interesting thing she has explored to date. She is also quite confident that she can get the binkie into her own mouth now and it makes her exceptionally happy when she can manage to also let go of the binkie without pulling it back out. I love the extra time I get by having Gina around so I can focus on Ashlyn and play on the carpet every single day. I don't think I have ever been able to do that. It's fantastic!

Handwriting

Ben brought me this note this afternoon what room I should visit for his Chinese teacher at Back to School Night. It was most definitely kid writing but looked like a sixth grader wrote it not a sloppy third grader. I kept looking back at it and wondering if they wrote it and traded papers or something.

It was one of those cases when you want to ask but by so doing you may totally insult the person. Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I asked, "Who wrote this note?" "I did," came the reply. In genuine shock I told him how amazing it looked and that I'd never seen anything he'd ever written look better than this note I was holding in my hand.

Benjamin smiled proudly from one ear to the other and looked just the tiniest bit embarrassed. Then he looked right at me and said, "I know it was good. I can do a LOT worse than that!" he grabbed the paper and wrote a certifiably awful "Ben" on the paper.

Golden Melon Gets an A+

Looked like a rock melon and tasted like a really great honeydew. Same consistency too. How many times have you had a hard honeydew or one that wasn't actually sweet. Ben liked it so much that he sent me a text while I was at the store the next day asking for another one so he could make a golden melon smoothie. Too bad I left my phone home and didn't see the request until I got home.

Mystery Fruit

Tonight we are having yet another mystery fruit we found at the grocery store yesterday. What do you think it will look like inside? We found it next to the watermelon and rock melon (aka cantelope). It was simply called golden melon though I'm not sure that is the real name since sometimes they label things generically like that so you have no idea what you are actually buying.

True Love

Jacob: "Mom I love you because you disappointed me. So I disappointed you."

Huh?

I'm working with jake on his teachers names. He knows the head teacher is Ms Jennifer but has two aids. I asked if he knows them yet. He responded in the affirmative. I asked, "Then which one is Ms Mas?" to which he replied, "Ummm. The last one." I was sort of expecting him to tell me what she looked like so I'm not sure what to mar of that answer. Maybe she is last in line everytime they leave the class or something.

Safety First

I'm all about safety and backup systems but is anyone else on my side in thinking this "backup" might not cut it when push comes to shove? If the firemen can't hook up their hoses here then maybe this two liter bottle of water will put out the four story fire.

One Down. Two To Go

Ben was happy to become a Intermediate School Lizard today.

Anxious Kiddos!

Last year the class lists were published by 11:00 am despite them publishing that the lists would be up by 3:00 pm. We just happened to be out and about at the library trading in our books. This year we were all pretty antsy so we could only hold out until 2:00 pm before we went over to check.
It wasn't out so we had to wait. We passed the time by learning how to play checkers.

Uniform Inspection

My big job of the day is to inventory the uniforms we have floating around here. The kids, despite not wanting to go to school next week, are so excited about their uniforms that Jacob and Maddie asked permission to wear theirs all day today.
They had me write Maddie's name on all her shirts last year. That's what Jake is wearing today. I'm not sure what to do. I save $80 if I can figure a way to convert "Maddie Mae" into "Jacob" and Ben is suggesting I start looking at the shops for fabric white out.

That's Using Your Head!!

Maddie has finally, for the most part, got her numbers 6-10 down. It's been a long, hard road and I'm so relieved. It has allowed me to move on in our summer homeschooling and this week we are doing addition and subtract up to 10. Mostly we use poker chips to visually see the problem but when it's a real simple one like 10-1 I have her use her fingers. She has a hard time keeping the numbers straight when she uses some fingers that are up (this counted in the total) to count other fingers on the other hand. Something about it just throws her. Today she started counting with her head. It worked! She didn't miss a single one. Now that's using you head.

We Have Finally Arrived

Ashlyn had a reasonable sleep through the night last night. I am one grateful mama. I have been exhausted since we got back to Singapore because she's been on the wrong time zone and all the other kids have been on the right one. That means I'm on neither time zone, just up all the time. Last night I had to stay up late doing paperwork junk so I went to bed late but she was wide awake most the evening, then down for the night after a good hearty eating at 8:30pm. Up at 3:00am to eat then right back in bed - NO PLAYING! Eat again at 5:45. I do think she's up for the day now, but I can deal with that.

All week the kids have been put to bed at 7:30. By 7:55 I've found myself in bed with the tv sleep timer on searching for a show to watch starting the 8:00 viewing hour. I didn't once make it to the beginning of the show only five minutes later.Yep. That's tired.

Thanks Ashlyn for switching. I need the sleep. No paperwork tonight.

Cock-a-doodle-do!!!

It's been a long night. In fact a long week of nights. Everyone seems to be on Singapore time but Ashlyn and thus by default me. If she's up I'm up.

I've been up down and disturbed since 3 am. The kids are now stirring and I just heard Jacob loudly proclaim, "COCK-A-DOODLE-DO!!!" Good morning. Here we go again.

PAX - Out of Context

In Singapore, vehicles that are for any sort of business use have to have a sticker on the back detailing how many people are allowed in the vehicle. Some are little ones as big as a Neon without the trunk space and have a "5 PAX" sticker. Others are flat bed lorries (trucks) the size of a diesel truck marked "48 PAX" where the work men have to sit all packed tight.

Last week we went to the Bountiful Utah Temple to worship and this license caught my eye. I pointed it out to Brian and we both had a good laugh. I had already turned my phone off and stowed it in the glove box but just had to go get it to snap a picture.

Can you possibly imagine 737 people stuck in this tiny Honda Accord? Now that is a clown car if I ever saw one!

"I'll Spit On Her!"

Ashlyn is a very wet baby. She always has slobber dripping off her chin and copious amounts of spit bubbles on her lips. She sneezed a big wet face full of nasty onto me yesterday. I proclaimed, "Eww!! That's gross Ashlyn!" Jacob ran over to me and loudly declared, "I'll spit on her for you!" Have I mentioned that he's spending fifty percent of his time outs as a result of spitting? It's a problem to be sure.

Also Ashlyn has some news. She's discovering her hands. She is playing with her binkie on a string and gobbling her fingers all day long. This picture made me laugh. She pulled the string hard and it sprung up. She was so confused and couldn't find it anywhere. Poor girl. It was sitting right there on her forehead.