swimmingly well

Lovely morning to start the week with. I hope you managed to get a bit of rest over the weekend and if not, there’s always the Lunar New Year break to look forward to this week.

5 days till the next long weekend, that ain’t so bad.

I spent my Sunday reading Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book by the pool while the husband brought the kids for a swim. In my books, that makes for a splendid Sunday afternoon. I first attempted to read the novel in November of 2008, 5 months after Truett was born. As big a Gaiman fan as I was, I couldn’t get through the first chapter because I got too scared.

When I got to the part where the man Jack was hunting for the baby in the graveyard, I completely panicked. I mean, there I was, 5 months in as a new mom, with my maternal instincts raging out of control and reading about a baby trying to escape from a big scary man with a sharp blade, the same man who had already finished off the rest of his family.

I closed the book in a hurry, stuffed it at the bottom of my book drawer and forced myself to think happy thoughts instead.

Not that it was very effective because that same night, I dreamt that an evil pizza delivery guy was trying to take Tru away from me and when I tried to scream for help, not a sound came out from my mouth no matter how hard I tried. It was the longest silent dream scream I had to make and I woke up feeling more terrified than I had ever been in my life. Till this day, I don’t order pizza. True story.

3 years later, I decided it was time to read the book. The kids were bigger and my maternal instincts were under control. More or less.

So I did and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

I had to do it in broad daylight surrounded by lots of people and I kept looking up every few minutes to check in on the kids even though I knew they were safe with the husband but the important thing is that I finished it. Maybe next week, I’ll do something even crazier and order pizza for dinner. Look fear in the eye and all that.

In other news, I haven’t done Hipstamatic Happiness in a while, so here’s one to kick off the new week.

Happy Monday!

The kids had a friend’s birthday party to attend yesterday and to them, birthday parties always means one thing: Pool Time. It just so happens that all the parties they’ve been to were all held at places with a pool.

So they insisted on going in their swim gear – it was their way of making sure we wouldn’t conveniently forget or change our minds about letting them swim. Now, some battles we really don’t want to fight so while all the other kids showed up in their party clothes, mine rocked it out in their swimsuits.

There was a balloon sculptor and very cool game stations but all they were all “meh…mommy, can we go swimming now? How about now? Or now? After I eat I can go swimming right?”

I’m making a mental note to save on the face painters and balloon sculptors for their next birthday bash and just go with a pool party. If Kirsten is into the Disney Princesses by then, I’ll dress up as Ariel and do my mermaid pose beside the pool while the husband entertains the kids in his Sebastian costume. Unless he prefers going as King Triton or Ursula, both of which are also fine. And no, the Prince Eric costume doesn’t count.

Anyway, when it was finally time, they RAN towards the pool, jumped right in to the deep end, held hands and swam off without even looking back, like “bye mom, see you later.” Which was actually a good thing because neither of us really wanted to go in to the pool with them.

But being the responsible parents that we are, we reminded them to “try not to drown” so we wouldn’t have to jump in after them.

They were so thrilled to finally be in the water after 2 weeks of quarantine at home and honestly, we were just happy to see them smiling again.

Here’s what you got to do

Take a dash of sunshine

Throw in fountains of dancing water

Some really good conversation

A scoop of stretchy exercise

Then sit back and soak it all in.

And if you really want to make a splash,

Fill up a jug of water

Pour some on your feet

Sprinkle some on your tiny toes

And drizzle the rest on your little sister for some good old fashioned fun.

I woke up yesterday morning to a bright sunshiney day and decided to drag my sister and the kids to Sentosa for a bit of good old Vitamin D. It’s been raining so much I actually dreamt that the weather forecast for Singapore had dipped to a low of 17 degrees and Twitter was going crazy with news that we were going to have actual winter next. But I woke up and it was hot again, so up went my dreams in flames.

But I’m not complaining because over in Siberia, I hear they’re dreaming of weather like ours just so they can go for a tan at the beach. If you’re in Siberia, good luck with that.

As usual, Kirsten was in her supercool alien outfit, this time with sunglasses to complete the look.

Apparently, being in water helps to clear her constipation because after not pooping for 2 days, she finally decided to do the number 2 right in her swimsuit. Good thing it was skintight so it was all contained around her thighs and ass. I only found out when I brought her to shower, where there was a lot of eww-ing and oh gross-ing that ensued.

On retrospect, that was probably why Tru was trying to help her shower during the water play session. He kept pouring water over her head and telling her to hold still, as Kirsten stood there obediently. He was all “mei mei needs to bathe” and I kept saying it’s ok, she would only bathe after we were done. Maybe the smell was so bad he had to do it himself.

The best part about having non-schooling kids is that we get to bring them to Sentosa on a school day and have the place all to ourselves. Even over at Resorts World, it was relatively quiet with just a handful of tourists, which almost made me want to pop into Universal again. I’m such a total theme park junkie. If I do end up getting the annual passes, I’d be there every week.

Now that I’m waiting for a place for them in playgroup, I’m actually even contemplating homeschooling them for the year because it’s been so much fun having them at home with me these past 2 weeks. I’m going to put together a curriculum that allows us to take our studying to the beach or the mall. More on that soon.