Weekend 8 & 9th March, 2014

 Before Class

 After Class at Ion Orchard. She asked me- Mummy, is this place "I", "on"?  wa, she reads sign posts now.

 Sunday morning. (see, slept with Tamiya)

 Both at Chinese centre.

 Then, it was our weekly beach time.

I said - Ok, let's go home.
And he quickly sprawled on the sand pretending to swim, making a last ditch before going home.... boys!

 The shells we picked.

 She "drew" a dog.

 And I found a nano shell.
(yes, looking at the lines on my palm, you can guess that I am a either a thinker or a worrier, whatever.)

  As tiny as 3 or 4mm

 I asked her who's "we".
She quickly retreated to - "no, I mean I love you Mama"  (still don't want to include Colin)

All the grass is dead. So sad.
Oh yes,,, there was a young couple who bought cartons of water from NTUC to water the huge, old trees at the beach. They touched the gigantic trucks gently before watering them. Such rare sightings.

Random Stranger

 Two weeks ago, I searched online for a Nano steamer to replace the one that has spoiled. The steamer was a gift from my classmate and I felt bad that it became faulty after such short use. Stumbled onto this young lady who sold some cosmetics and girly stuff she often overbuy. I queried about the fanciful phone case she featured but she said those were hers and not for sale. But she offered to ask her friend to get for me since her friend is holidaying in Korea. Such helpful ladies, both of them. Both phone cases for $54.50, I don't think they made money from me and even if they did or wanted to, I would gladly give. I wished those were authentic but there aren't such fanciful, authentic ones.

So much Joy

YC returned me the Tamiya tracks we gave her some ten years ago.
She said her boys have long outgrown Tamiya.
KiCo were soooooooooooooo excited, they were screeching with laughter so loudly that my partially blind, partially deaf, partially dementia father-in-law emerged from his room to check the commotion.
They literally brought the house down. LOL.
Bren took 1 hour to fix the first car, and half the time on the second car.
Tamiya cars are not as widely sold as the toy has passed its peak (in sales & demand), Bren found them at Toys'R us (we thought Isetan might have but no).

Nicklaus, a Pinocchio Fan.

Last Friday, I finally got to meet up with Val.
We thought meeting at her place would be a better idea because she has to attend to Nicklaus (turning 4 this June) as her hubby has a game of volleyball planned. Allen cooked us a simple pork liver don (Japanese style) dinner before heading for his game. Chatting and catching up over her recent Taiwan trip, over the types of educational videos Nicklaus watches, etc., I discovered Nicklaus is a huge Pinocchio fan. So I told him I will mail him a souvenir from Pisa, Italy. Iresh bought two Pinocchio pencils for Kico & one pen for me last December when she toured there with her family. I am saving the pencils until Kico learns to write, but I guess the pencil will make a young, real Pinocchio fan over-the-moon, so, we will part with one of them, to bring joy to another friend.

Post entry:  See, the young Pinocchio fan's so delighted when he received the mail.

Bowling

Wa, at least improved my average score from 64.66 the week before, to 88.66.
I still couldn't throw a straight ball but I learn to stand on the right so that the ball would eventual curve to the center of the block of pins.... well, that's improvising.

Self Entertain

She asked if she could use the scissors and I said ok, but little did I know she was making some crafts with it. (I had thought that she just needed to cut a string off or something). I was busy doing....... many stuff, bathe, reply phone messages, chatting with Bren, revising my violin, etc.

When she was ready, she made me close my eyes and count to ten.
There are tails of Horse, Leopard, Elephant, Cat, Monkey, and (the one in Green, I can't remember which animal it belonged to). Then she said whatever we put behind our bums, we would then pretend to be that animal, and if you are the leopard, you could eat the cat.... wow,,,, dramatic play?
I asked why are there a pair of the same animal tail?
She explained; so that we would both have a tail in the event we chose a same animal. 

 I thought it was a pair of disposable gloves, but it was not.
She used the scissors and made tassels at the bottom of a plastic bag.
I thought it was Casper, or the ghosts from Pamac, but she said NO!, it is a Jelly Fish.
(oh I see)

 And this is a Tiger   (not cat)

Reading Club (March 3rd to 7th)

Recent Foodie

Our weekly dinner date after class every Saturday.

 My favourite Mee Soto (I would prefer Been Hoon Soto if they have it).

 Bren says he hasn't had Mee Rebus for ages.

 Baked rice from the coffee shop stall (Char Grill Bar)Sunday's dinner

 Tong Banged a friend to get it for me from the airport.

A typical lunch at work.

Last Friday Night

We went Kiseki (Buffet) to have dinner and celebrate my aunt Julie's birthday.
Made a makeshift cake assembled from cubes of cakes.She couldn't stop praising my creativity (although I think nothing of it). 

Colin (2 yrs)

Passport due for renewal. Hope I'll go places.

Seeing Double

I am very lazy when it comes to dressing, very often, I will buy two different colours in same design. So that I won't need to spend time thinking what to don on for two days at least. Just wear one after another.
I have many more such paired clothing, shall catalogue them later on.

Sightings

Cats & Dogs

Reading Club

Kiki's school has a reading club. Each week, the children get to select one English and one Chinese story book. They will bring it home in the middle of the week and we will return the books on Monday. Every Tuesday, the kids will have to read the Chinese book in class while Wednesday, they will read English.

Kiki's Mandarin pronunciation is a little off, given that she hardly gets to hear Mandarin besides school and enrichment. I am very thankful for the school's reading club because although I read to her, I have not found much books that she could read on her own. (we only have one beginner's book in the entire home library and those at our national library are not for beginner readers or i didn't look hard enough).

The next thing for me is to read to Colin. This has become very troubling for me because I only get to see him on weekends. Every night, he is asleep when I am home. I feel troubled when I couldn't give him more of my time. For now, I asked Bren to do it but he is not a good reader, he reads every sentence like a question. The alternative is to have Maricar read to him, she's not too bad and I hope she will help me out here. Until such time when Colin could delay bedtime, perhaps I would then get the chance.

Mystery of the lost fortune

Kiki was in distress when she failed to locate the last piece of cookie that was kept in the tupperware.
With limited vocab to describe, all she could ask was - Where's the cookie! Where's that cookie!  She became more agitated when the Papa showed her all sorts of biscuits but of course those were not what she had in mind. Someone ate the last piece of cookie she was saving for the evening. Seeing that we didn't understand what she meant, she flew to grab just anything she could draw on (incidentally, the box cover of a coin medal from the blood bank), and sketched the above. Oh I see....... it's the box of fortune cookies that disappeared. I managed to pacify her by telling her I will get her a new box. (fingers crossed, because I don't want her to consume those. they are too sweet.)

Bowling

 My parent company organised bowling games for the staff, five sessions in total.
There are many good players, I'm not one of them but still it was quite all right.