Yesterday was Kirsten’s first birthday bash and as first birthday bashes go, this went splendidly. The fact that we only sent out invites 3 days prior notwithstanding, we had all the ingredients necessary for a party – food, family, friends and cake. And also balloons, lots and lots of balloons. (thanks Kev and Anne!)

Baby girl wasn’t entirely sure what the commotion was all about, like “why are all these people making me wear stupid prickly hats, it’s making my ears itch eww eww eww.”

She’s in a no-headgear phase now and no amount of cajoling and bribery will make her put anything on her head. I try to make her wear these pretty headbands with giant flowers to draw attention away from her noticeably sparse hair and she yanks them off with a flourish every single time. The noggin is sacred, y’all.

And of course, miniature parties are never complete without miniature-sized friends, because it would just be a bunch of old fogeys rocking out to pink and purple balloons, which is just kind of creepy.

Tru was down with another bout of the flu, which left him pretty stoned the whole time but he was a real trooper, shuffling around distributing his precious collection of sesame street friends. Towards the end, he was all maxed out and he started telling everyone to go home like “Bye everyone, thank you for coming, see you soon, Truett very tired.” It was both very impressive and mortifying at the same time.

At first we thought of ordering one of those 3D cakes with castles and princess figurines but we figured that we will be having plenty of those soon enough, when the kids are old enough to want one. And since we have a weakness for this awesome home-baked chocolate-banana cake, we went and ordered a 2kg version, hoping that we would have leftovers for breakfast today but no, it was totally wiped out within minutes.

You know I don’t usually plug a lot of stuff here but this cake, you seriously want to try. Go check it out, she does the most wicked cakes ever, with the perfect combination of rich, chocolatey goodness without being an overkill. Sometimes, I plan events just to have an excuse to have more cake. And I’m not even kidding.

Best part was, both kids were so exhausted they went home and collapsed into bed at 7.30. Now that’s what I call a successful party.

Having been a stay-home mom for almost 2 years, I sometimes forget why I wanted to do it so badly in the first place. I mean, you do something long enough and the grass starts to look greener on the other side. I start to think of how nice it would be to dress up and have power lunches (do people still call it that or am I that outdated) with other non-babies. To not have to start work at 10 at night, after a whole day of manual labor.

I know it is a privilege to be able to work from home and take care of the babies at the same time and I’m not complaining.

Well, maybe just a little bit.

Ok, maybe a lot.

But the point is, at times like these, we all just need a little reminder of why we are doing it in the first place.

Everyone, meet my reminder.

So a couple of days ago, I had one of my nights off to attend an event organized by Pat Law from Goodstuph (more on that later), who as I found out, is a former colleague from my short-lived advertising days at Publicis. 6 years later, she’s now a bad-ass social media guru (I think that means she invented the Internet or something, I’m not very sure), and me, I’ve got two babies. Also, I can make a killer aglio olio, which is like the parenting equivalent of inventing the Internet, obviously.

Anyway, I was getting ready to go out when Tru starts to smell a rat because momma never puts on makeup at 630 in the evening, and that means only one thing – a night out without him. My preemptive strike involved explaining that mommy has to go to work. (which at that time sounded far more credible than mommy had to go chill out over mini sandwiches)

Next thing I knew, he flung his body onto my calfs and proceeded to attach himself surgically to my legs while shrieking “NOOOOOOOO, mommy don’t go work! Don’t like mommy to go work, mommy stay home” about 20,000 times. At which point I switched strategy and tried to explain that mommy had to go for an event, because I figured I might as well confuse him with words he doesn’t know, hoping that it would distract him from the issue at hand.

Except that my kid apparently knows what an event is, and he was all like “Not work, mommy go e-ben.” He ponders for a moment, then goes “NOOOOOOOO, mommy don’t go e-ben! Don’t like mommy to go e-ben, mommy stay home.”

When he realizes that it’s not working, he suddenly remembers that he is more likely to get his way when he asks nicely. “Mommy, can stay home please, please, please?” Now that always gets me, because 3 pleases is a big deal.

I was close to ditching the event because my little boy needed me to tuck him into bed but the husband told me that I needed a breather and he had everything under control, so I went. I was glad to be out for a while but that night, it all came back to me – the reason why I left my job in the first place. Because if I had to hear that many pleases every morning while I left them with a bunch of strangers and went on my merry way, I would be crying all the way to work every day. And honestly, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.

On retrospect, manual labor and a couple of late nights don’t seem so bad after all.

Weekends are best spent at the beach so that’s what we did last Saturday. We woke up early, packed the kids into the car and headed down to Sentosa for a leisurely morning by the beach. I’m not really one for beaches, what with all that icky sand and sandflies and murky water filled with gooey slimy stuff.

But I’m a parent now so I do what I do best these days, which is to suck it up and get on with the program. Just because it makes the kids smile.

I’ve come to realize that the best time to take pictures of the kids is at the start of any activity, way before they have a chance to look like a street urchin. At least for my kids, that is. Which means that I’ve got a 15 minute window of optimum photo time tops.

Remember my theory about boys and girls? I’ll summarize it for you. Boys are disgusting and girls are not. Initially, it was just a theory and I didn’t have any conclusive scientific evidence to support my hypothesis. But I do now.

Peruse Specimen A.

The moment Tru saw the shimmering water from a mile off, he yanked off his shirt and started RUNNING for his life. Before I knew it, he was flinging sand everywhere, and by everywhere I mean in his hair, nostrils, ears, belly button and I don’t even want to know what else. I bet he ate handfuls of sand in the process.

And before that, I was still debating with the husband as to whether we should pack their swimwear. I was all like “It’s so gross, I bet Tru won’t want to go in” and the husband, well he’s a dude, so go figure.

With Truett, he doesn’t take things slow. He doesn’t dip his toes in the water and get his feet a little wet. He goes ALL IN. And at first I was yelling at him to stay out of the water but it was a lost cause. I should have known that I can’t expect Tru to see water and not jump in. It’s physically impossible for him to exercise any form of self control, like there’s some primitive override button the moment he sees bodies of water.

Moving on to Specimen B.

Did I already say she’s a princess? The whole time, she never stepped beyond the boundaries of her little beach mat. Some sand bits inevitably got in between her fingers and she started frowning intently, like “SERVANTS!! Get this grain of sand away from me! And why is it so blistering hot?? BRING ME MY FAN AND MY GRAPES! HELPPPPP THERE’S SAND ON MY DOLL, I’m just going to hold it gingerly like this with 2 fingers!!”

That’s my girl.

Have I told you about the time I brought Kirsten to the pool and halfway through she saw my can of coke sitting on the table and insisted that she NEEDED to drink it? Being a responsible parent and all, I said no obviously, because it’s filled with sugar and bad stuff for kids.

But then I once used coke to remove rust so maybe it means that it will remove bad stuff from your system so we should all have more coke. I’m not sure which. I’m going with the second one.

Anyway, so she put on her jedi robe and used the force to take it when I was not looking, which is kind of like taking it by force if you think about it. And I figured, the last guy to mess with young jedi powers got all his limbs sliced off and had to wear a life support system and breathe like someone who chain-smoked for 40 years.

If you must know, the story ends with me chickening out and giving her the coke. Only thing is, she hasn’t reached the advanced jedi level of learning how to open the can with the force so she spent the next 15 minutes prying it open with all of her 4 teeth and pudgy fingers while I sat beside her and gloated.

You know what this means though. I’m not sending her for jedi classes anymore.

Happy Monday, y’all.

There once was a rickety old bus that nobody wanted anymore. Its paint was chipping. The seats that used to smell of fresh leather were now torn and tattered. The windows were long gone. The doors struggled each time it tried to open and shut.  It wheezed and sighed and creaked.

When the new buses came along, nobody cared much for this little old bus and it was soon forgotten.

Everyday, the conductor stood at the door as the rickety old bus rolled around town looking for passengers but none came.

“It’s time to hit the scraps, you’re too old and slow.” some called out. “Nobody wants to sit on a creaky old bus like you,” shouted another.

The conductor didn’t listen. “You’re special and one day, someone will see that,” he told the bus. So off they went on their merry way, happy to feel the gentle breeze that blew through the open windows. “We’re not too old to have new adventures,” they said.

One day, a little boy saw the rickety old bus as it pulled up beside him. He stopped and looked at it. He saw the chipped paint and the empty windows but it was the passenger right at the back that caught his eye.

The boy thought for a moment, then he got up, walked all the way to the back and sat down with a smile. “The bus sure looks like it could use a facelift,” he thought, “but the girl at the back, she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

Sitting there at the back, the boy was happier than he had ever been before. “I’m never getting off this bus,” he said to himself. He stole glances at the girl next to him, not sure if she could hear the thump of his heart, or if she was just playing it cool.

“She’s totally playing it cool,” he convinced himself.

All day, the bus drove around town and passengers came up and left. But neither the boy or his girl moved an inch. It was the bestest day of their lives.

When they were done driving, the conductor told them stories about all the adventures the rickety old bus had been on years and years ago, when it was not so old or rickety.

“I’m glad you didn’t stop being a bus,” the boy said. “Because to me, you’re the most awesome bus in the whole wide world.”

And the bus just smiled.