Author: charlestess

countdown till Christmas

it is Christmas eve and everyone is in bed. i have accomplished the tasks i had for myself today, and so magnificent and i will shortly head to snooze-land as well, knowing the tablewear is out, the flatware polished and ready, the broccoli sliced, the turkey brined and in the fridge since 6.30pm, the happy birthday Jesus cake frosted and 12 candles located and placed in a location where i can easily find them tomorrow (famous last words). there are a couple last minute gifts to wrap, but i can manage those in bed because none of them are for magnificent.

we went to st john’s cathedral tonight for their family christingle service. although union church is the oldest church in hong kong, st johns is probably the most famous. it is a gorgeous cross-shaped building

http://www.stjohnscathedral.org.hk/home.html

and beautifully furnished inside. because of it’s age and size, it costs approximately us$5,000 to maintain the building DAILY.

the Christingle family service was at 5pm, and union church’s service was at 6pm. knowing that my kids needed to be in bed by 7.30 sharp, we decided on the st john’s service, and headed into central with chad, andrea and adam, ella and ashleigh. the building was crammed with people, and charles and chad got us seats at the very back of the building. even then, we only had eight seats, so ella and sela shared a seat and jasper happily planted himself on my lap. i had brought crayons to divert the kids in case they got noisy.

about five minutes into the service (right after the first hymn), sebastian and carys needed to use the toilet. charles offered to take them and adam decided he needed to go too. the sermon began. it was quiet indeed as the rector asked, rhetorically,

who was born on Christmas Day?

and all of a sudden, the voice next to me, screams out happily and confidently in the silent cathedral, "BABY JESUS!" it’s jasper and he’s thrilled. (and paying attention???)

heads turn, laughter swells, and the slightly shocked rector says, "that’s right!" and jasper nods. satisfied.

a couple of other kids now decide that it is open mike nite, and they answer the next few questions. (jasper doesn’t because my hand is over his mouth.)

and just when i think it is safe, i remove my hand just as the rector says the word, "shepherd". well, that’s just too much for jasper.

"i am a shepherd!" he bellows. "i can’t wait to see baby Jesus!" there is so much laughter (majority from chad) that the second part of his sentence is largely not heard.

the rector continues on, and asks someone else (we were so far away, that i couldn’t tell if it was adult or child,), "what do you think, cameron?

and of course, ding dong double damn it, whose party did jasper go to on thursday? you guessed it.

"cameron?" jasper says incredulously. "cameron’s my friend!"

shortly after the sermon ceased, we got our Christingle candles (candles placed in an orange) and we held them up and sang songs and of course one of the carols was "away in a manger" and if you remember from a few days back, someone in our home loves that song.

and jasper turned to the person behind him and said, "i like this song!" and belted out the words to the first verse throughout verses one, two and three.

in our defense, it does say the Christingle service is a family service.

i’m just glad they didn’t sing jingle bells.

happy Christmas.

tragedies always seem most tragic at Christmas.

within the last 24 hours, i have learned of two tragedies.

one, a triplet mum in michigan who died during delivery due to complications. never got to hold her two new daughters and son. http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?S=7527243 amniotic fluid got into the bloodstream.

second, this morning at 7.30 a friend of mine died of cancer. a brave friend who held her husband, son and daughter many times, who had been battling various forms of cancer on and off for years. she used to live in our building, and the family also attended our church. we served on the fellowship ministry team together. odila and i had lunch together with her in late october.

and i also learned that a health scare i had, is for now, dormant.

so here we go…bits of a little poem that i have loved.

xo

despite not being musically gifted, we are a singing sort of family.

in the early days, singing was a way for me to express love and tenderness to the babies i couldn’t touch and hold. it was a way for me to tease a smile out of my so serious sebastian.

in the later days, singing was a way for me to repeat the same thing many many many (i am singing as i write this!) times without going completely loco. "i like the way you’re cleaning up, i like the way you’re cleaning up, you’re cleaning up so well…"

other top 10 hits:

tissue not the finger, please

first time i ask, please

when a door is shut, you should do what?

shh shh shh! good night my loves, i hope you are well, good night good night, miss clavell!

you get the picture.

most recently, in fact, as of yesterday, music has become a way of determining how integrated the kids are becoming into modern ways of the world.

Christmas carols do tell us quite a bit. i think we know that Rudolph the red nosed raindeer has those additional second hand lines, that we ourselves used when we were in mary janes, thank you very much. the song has morphed somewhat, as i don’t recall singing lustily like my dear sebastian does, "you’ll go down in history…like shakespeare!" but we did mention that rudolph never got to play any games…like monopoly!

we went to a birthday party yesterday. the birthday boy is a classmate of jasper’s, and thursday jasper woke up and said, "ith cameron’th party today!"

i replied, "and you are going!"

and from across the room sela came running toward me, grabbing carys’ hand so that the two of them were running together. they screeched to a halt infront of me.

"mummy" sela started, and touched her chest with one hand and her sister’s with the other, "what about the girls? are they going to the party?"

"yes, cameron’s mummy did invite you"

"ooh hurray!" shouted the social convenor and raced to her room to select a dress. (note: she wore chartreuse pants and a pink top).

on the way back from the party, the tired trio began singing.

"jingle bells, jingle bells,!

oh how nice i thought, what a lovely spontaneous song.

and then it continued, and my smile froze

robin flew away!

mr silly lost his willy

on his way to bal-let!

from my three year olds, thank you very much!

oh, my! i said, and where did you learn this song? like i didn’t KNOW!

sebastian and adam! replied my three, who launched into it again. and then again. little rotters.

so now, music is a temperature gage of determining what they know and the context they’re using them in. it’s funny (not ha ha) that they start using the context the minute older brother does.

good tidings they did not bring, to one of their kin.

but what could i say to sebastian? really?

happy for hormones

i am very grateful for my hormones.

not that mine were ever particularly obedient during the infertility years, my ovulation temperature charts looked like a flatline and indicated no oestrogen surge at all. magnificent used to put my daily temperature on the computer and made a very nice, professional graph out of it all, which he converted to power point to show how month by month my hormones were not improving or moving.

but on days like today, i am grateful for hormones.

i can blame my hormones on the absolutely crap day i feel like i am having. in fact, it was a good day, denby, mother of asha and shae (jasper’s "betht friends") and i took the trips and her twins out for lunch (her husband matt and their 15 month old ethan joined us) and then to a party. the kids were really well behaved. we were on the double decker bus, in taxi’s, and the kids were squashed and very good.

but at home it just seems that life is miserable. at one point, sebastian was meant to be reading to me and he wasn’t paying attention, and i got so fed up with drawing him back to the book. finally i just said, stop, sebastian, go away. you’re not trying and i cannot make you.

he dashed away, very grateful and happy, a renewed bounce in his step and his previously inaudible voice happy and loud.

yet halfway to the table and the tableau of siblings waiting to laugh at his jokes and encourage him in his ideas, he turned and raced back to me and gave me a big hug.

where did he learn this empathy?

why did he hug me? did he know he was being a rotter?

my black mood was momentarily lifted, and then plunged again when i asked him to brush his teeth, four times he ignored me. action time — no special blanket tonight. sebastian burst into tears, started using a baby voice and called me cruel and said that daddy never takes away his blanket. this is true. but as mean as i felt, i didn’t give sebastian his blanket back.

instead i cuddled it as i watched "friends".

i am going to try to blame everything that is going on on hormones, and not at all on my children who hate me and my misdirected, over zealous strictness which obviously isnt getting results.

the other day i braved the masses and headed over to toys r’ us.

typically, tru in hong kong follows along the same theory as hong kong grocery shops. small aisles, unfathomable turns, etc. the north american counterparts are wide-aisled and lovely, even during the Christmas season, i am confident.

while standing in line i noticed a very small sign that i might have not read had i not been trained by frugal blake to sight this word from 50 metres: FREE.

what was free? i panicked, wondering if it was worth losing my place in the queue in order to grab a bargain, a free bargain i might have missed. trying to catch the eye of a hapless salesperson who would do my bidding.

on closer inspection, the sign read, "free giftwrapping, second floor."

well, hello dolly!

i scuppered up to the second floor with my purchases, a smile on my face. free giftwrapping! tra la la la la…good tidings we bring to you and your king…..and stopped.

although there was room for three gift wrappers, there was only one at the gift wrapping counter. and the lineup was four deep. there were three businessmen, one in a very nice cashmere coat, and one woman, all holding a bag in each hand.

the girl (a tru employee but there was a bucket where you could donate to unicef) was taping herself into a frenzy. good thing frugal blake wasn’t there to wince over the excessive tape she was using. "oh the waste" i could hear him muttering.

what stunned me was that in hong kong, this city of time is worth more than money…these people were willing to stand in line, when there were many places available, and wait while one person did their wrapping. especially this poor cello tape wielding girl, who looked harried and frantic and who could blame her?

perenially strapped for time tess…was i willing to wait? when for a person to do a job i very well could do?

i think not. i was only in it for the free wrapping paper!

i didn’t have anywhere i had to be THAT minute…but i mean seriously. who is going to wait in line for an amateur gift wrapper to wrap your gifts when you can do it yourself.

i moved behind the counter, shrugged off my jacket, and started pulling my gifts out of the bag. the people in line observed me, but not one of them had an issue, or objected to me jumping the queue as it were. because i was doing the work myself.

i pulled nice crisp corners and taped them tightly.

flipped them over. another small tap of tape.

cello girl next to me looked at my masterpiece.

i started off with an easy, rectangular one to get me in my groove, then started in on one of the toughies.

no problem, i was cruising. not using surplus paper, eyeing the corners correctly…yes this was a good wrapping experience. 

another person came along, saw the tru employee and me, put two and two together to make a very neat four and took the next space and started in on her purchases. the people in the queue again had no truck with this.

i finished wrapping, stuffed some cash into the unicef container and then caught the bus home.

i was out of there faster than three of the four business people who had originally been ahead of me in line. and as i was leaving…one of the men brought his purchases over to me and asked if i would wrap them! "it’s for charity!" he said with a smile.

worth mentioning: i always give the kids a container of cello tape each in their stockings. its a great gift. they like it almost as much as they like their m&m’s.

in the past few days i have had arguments with just about everyone under my roof.

sebastian and i are having our annual christmas carol quarrel. the source: "we wish you a merry Christmas". the composer of this song is unknown, probably because he/she knew i would be cussing him/her out in centuries to come.

here is the heart of the argument. sebastian is lustily and off key singing:

….good tidings we bring…

what are tidings mummy?

they’re happy wishes. like when you say happy birthday.

oh okay.

…..good tidings we bring, to you and your king….

um, sebastian my love, it is actually good tidings we bring to you and your kin

no mummy, bring and kin don’t rhyme. it is king.

kin means family, did you know that sebastian!

bring and king rhyme.

the discussion is apparently over, because sebastian recommences his song with vigour,

good tidings we bring, to you and your king

shooting me a glance at the appropriate word.

the thing is, he does have a point.

jasper got upset with me because i asked him to either learn the rest of the song or stop singing the two lines he knows of:

in a thtable

in a manger

and even though i put the wiggles (what else) video on for him so he could learn the rest of the song, he flounced away.

carys and sela are cross with mummy because i didn’t let them wear high heels to school today.

you’re wearing mummy shoes! they cried accusingly, sela even pointing a chubby finger.

"yes, and what am i?" hoping the answer would naturally lead to MUMMY….and should it not have?

but instead…what came from the mouths of babes.

"QUITE MEAN!" cried sela and carys chimed in, "i am bebe’s mummy and sela is sponge bob’s mummy. we’re mummies!"

charles and i haven’t quarrelled, but i expect we will before the Christmas season ends.

i’m stunned to report that this year at tree decorating i was able to have a completely laissez-faire attitude toward the lacklustre decorating style of the kids. after cheering me on as i strung lights around the tree (go mummy go!) i held out ornaments, and their little scratchy nails scraped against my palm as they grabbed, turned, then scrambled back to the tree, where they placed the ornament wherever their frantic little hands could reach.

and the only ornaments i have moved are those that have fallen to the ground. and i don’t mean ornaments that i pull off a branch, wink wink nudge nudge, drop to the ground and say, "oh! an ornament has fallen!i guess this means i must move it to another location where it fits the symmetry of the tree!"

so our poor tree is as bottom heavy as salma hayek in late pregnancy. but like salma, the tree (and kids) don’t care. they think it is a gorgeous tree. and it is quite cute in a laughing sort of way. and if you could see the gorgeously handmade and loving ornaments the kids are bringing home, then you know a haphazard tree is the only way to go right now.

i am also exceptionally proud that yesterday when we did gingergbread houses, i was able to let the kids loose. i didn’t even act as an advisor. i monitored how many m&m’s went in their wretched pie holes, but that is it. for 2007 gingerbread homestyle and living, sebastian and carys squared off against sela and jasper.

it was very interesting, because magnificent suddenly got competitive. he was supervising the carys/sebastian team, and exited into the kitchen, and returned a few seconds later, turning himself away from me. normally this man positions his bottom very close to my hand, desperate for a chance at a bum rub. yet he was, no other day to say this, avoiding me.

why? the journalist in me inquired.

obviously there was a reason. what was it.

i wrestled him and we made such a commotion the kids actually stopped eating m&m’s.

would you believe it? he had smuggled in some red icing in an attempt to create a more Christmassy look on "his" gingerbread house.

taking the high road, i shrugged. "i’m just letting the kids do their own thing" i said, removing a jelly baby from jasper’s mouth and giving it to sela who placed it on the house. (it stuck).

"you can’t" he stated. "you’re tess!"

this was of course exactly what i needed, a challenge to re-direct my competitive streak.

"just watch me" i sniffed.

so the sela/jasper gingerbread house is ridiculous, with indents of m&m’s placed and then picked off the roof as greed got the best of home decor. they had a fun time and i haven’t once mentioned that the house has no windows. their house is hilarious, but not nearly as hilarious as my dear husband’s. why you enquire? well, the red icing fell into the hands of sebastian, who decided it looked like red spiderweb, and thus, put the suggestion to his very agreeable sister that their house be covered in "red web". it looks like spiderman bled out of his costume and charles was as sick as a parrot.

ha!

triplet pics

pictures of the triplets at their small world christian kindergarten christmas plays can be found over at charles’ blog.

10 reasons why lita and i should be reunited

yes, anyone (note i didn’t say i) can clean a house. most people can successfully seal a baby’s two lower orifices with a nappy.

so why should lita and i be reunited?

read on:

10. i miss her sarcasm.

9. i saw her husband yesterday and can tell he is missing her a great deal

8. de isn’t getting enough good food. he is only eating cup noodles and 7-11 sandwiches at odd times of the day. back in the old days when they lived with us, she cooked both of us outstanding meals

7. calgary is very cold. what if lita gets frostbite and her fingers and toes freeze off? she has very nice, long fingers.

6. she is going to be away from de and baby melissa for Christmas. and me for that matter. what good is snow if you don’t have someone to throw it at?

5. no one tells me things about playground life anymore. i was virtually the last to learn that 20a are moving out of the building

4. when i try to give a pair of shoes to anyone else, they laugh and say, "oh, my feet aren’t nearly that big!"

3. lita agreed with me when the kids were being appalling

2. where she is living she is dependent on public transportation, which comes once every 45-60 minutes. very different from hong kong where she could/did walk everywhere or take the bus!

and lastly, to quote "red" from the shawshank redemption, (not that i see my life as a prison)…

1. i miss my friend

jasthper the thepard

"i only like "away in the manger"" confessed my youngest son today, as i asked him why he only sang one of the songs in his Christmas pageant.

what can you say when faced with that logic?

the pageant was very sweet, very fun and extremely endearing. i could go on and on, but really, only pictures will do and i hope to post some soon, as well as a video so you can hear jasper belting out his lines in his in his deep gravelly voice.