Author: charlestess

does it look like i like your kids?

in the six months when we planned, cancelled, planned, cancelled, planned and finally paid for this holiday, magnificent and i were resigned to the fact that while we were here, we would be on parent alert. this was not a couples lovey dovey holiday, at least not between 7am-pm. this was suburbia goes to the beach. forget the beach novels, the beach bag is filled with kids toys, cups, and kids needs. there is no reading when you have kids at the pool. besides upsetting our kids, who want us in the pool with them, it would also be kind of rude to our fellow holiday-ers. how fun is it to listen to kids trying to get their parents attention when their parents are locked in vanity fair (even a boring, sans dominick dunne episode) or a men’s health? it is irritating because the kids will just increase the volume tone until the parents finally, exasperated look up and say, WHAT? so no, we wouldn’t do that, to our kids, ourselves or the people around us.

with no false expectations, every day magnificent and i take the kids to breakfast, stopping en route to claim el primo kids poolside beach chairs. not many of our fellow le meridien holidayers are awake at 7am, so we have the best seats to choose from. to be fair, there is no shortage of pool in this resort:

www.lemeridien.com/phuketbeachresort

and then we’re off to breakfast.

afterwards, we might explore the beach for a bit, but it is always handy to be near a bathroom, as all four are very regular morning time people these days. we found an eel the other morning, it was dead which was a good lesson for sebastian on how eels can’t breathe oxygen, but people do, and i took some great pictures of it’s little teeth. there is a place to rock climb, but young seb is too, well, young.

so we head back to the pool which is the only place the kids want to be anyway. we have staked out this circular pool which opens into one of the wider pools as our place. jasper loves "swimming" around the sitting area of the circle, the girls are getting braver and practise their "swimming walk" to and fro across the circular pool. seb is happy practising his front crawl and i have bitten a hole through my bottom lip as i have managed not to lecture him on how he could be so much more effective if he only straightened his legs when he kicked.yay me.

all the kids, except jasper, being swung in the water. this is a great way to get their faces a little wet. we either play tick tock tick tock im a little cuckoo clock, and then dunk them under, or my bonnie lies over the ocean, and lift them in and under the water. (exhausting).

now when we do this, a respectful or hyper little circle of other kids tends to gather around us demanding that we give them a go. same with when i am launching seb off my knees or charles and i are throwing him in the water. kids love this stuff. they did three decades ago when i was the launchee, and they do now when i am the launcher. i will vault the kid in the water a few times, but it’s tough throwing 40lbs of kid into the water (when you’re already in the water), and i start looking around for the kids parents.

the kids are around 3-6 years of age. the younger ones have arm bands and are paddling around, the older ones swimming. but where are the parents?

i can’t tell. magnificent, mo, myself and the aquafit instructor are the only people in the pool right now. where is everyone else? everyone else is reading. occasionally looking up, but not really.

i am not kidding myself, if i for one moment thought that my kids were self sufficient in the water i would be heading back to the beach chair and opening a book. but when the sole parents in the water suddenly become the kids club, am i a bad person because i begrudge looking after all the other kids? i’m here to spend time with MINE. to watch them blow bubbles, to encourage them to put their faces under water and do the arrow float. to take THEM to the bathroom.

we have 2 days left here….how should i handle this??

thanks in advance.

http://www.oneishy.com/personality/

here is another link for you, have fun with it. i personally am not all that assured of it’s accuracy. in its attempts for alliteration, i think they lose something in the accuracy. however, having said that, it is an interesting analysis.

share the results. i am choleric something.

for the past four days i have had a ray of redlight in my life. one of my best friends from forever is visiting me. how good a friend is she? i don’t really want to take the time to write, because i don’t have a lot of time left with her, and don’t want to post while she is here. but let’s just say i don’t have a high school picture of the two of us, because there was so much big hair, we couldn’t both get in the frame.

she is beautiful, reddish blonde hair that she is now straighting, instead of backcombing. she is still optimistic and interested. she enchants locals with her questions and her attempts to master the language.  having her here is easy and good, we know each other well even though we haven’t spent time with each other in years. ben and magnificent get along well, and both she and ben love hong kong.

we first really got to be friends one day during debate class, she was pro choice and i was pro life. we led the debate, and i don’t think any one else really spoke. but we did, afterclass too. we did’nt agree on a lot of politics, but we sure liked each other. and nothing has changed.

i am caught in the middle at times, she is trying to nudge me towards taking them into discount shops and ben is trying to get a sense of the geographical layout of things. not that i don’t have any experience with this sort of thing and my own parents, and i handle it well. she is a great shopper, no hemming and hawing and price debates. ben really has nothing to be upset about.

i love her because she made an effort for me. her business trip took her to beijing and she said, "how could i not be in beijing and not come and see you?" and she did make the effort for us. that overwhelms me. i love that even though we have spent very little time together, we have had a wonderful time and we still get along so very very well.

i have been so blessed to have friends like this in my life. friends who will come visit me, friends who want to. annemiekes and oprahs. old friends. new friends. my friends.

i think yeats said it best…..

think where man’s glory most begins and ends,

and i say my glory was i had such friends

i don’ lak tha

i am hearing those words rather frequently these days. in the most absurd context.

today, 100 percent of my offspring informed me they don’t like cinammon bread. HOW CAN THAT BE? remember the punnett square? there is NO WAY that my kids can’t like cinammon loaf.

vegetables, goes without saying that jasper "don’ lak vegetbales". carys will tell you the same story as well but i can usually fire a few down her throat. sela will claim, "i don’ lak tha" when i pull out a green gap jumper. she howls. and don’t even get her started on green socks. to quote swiper (and i do, only the literary greats for me, "ohhhh man!"

carys "don’ lak" most things that her sister doesn’t…she looks to sela for guidance. sela is her martha steward guide to good living. but carys has her own little quirks. she don’ lak my little pony knickers for some reason. i am not sure why.

sebastian is going through a real beatrix potter phase, but SOME BOOKS ONLY. i read to him jemima puddle duck this afternoon and he was completely nonplussed when we got to the end and the puppies ate all of jemima’s eggs that she had been so carefully sitting on for the last weeks. "HER BABIES WERE INSIDE AND THE DOGGIES ATE THEM!" he exclaimed. so jemima goes alongside peter rabbit as books we don’t read. (seb doesn’t like peter rabbit because he doesn’t like the visual of peter’s father being made into a pie.) he likes tale of two bad mice the very best, mrs tiggy winkle all right, tailor of gloucester, squirrel nutkin, tom kitten, but there are a few that he "don’ lak".

seb doesnt lak that life isn’t fair. he has been invited to a birthday party on saturday, and we will not be in town. the birthday girl in question, cherise, is a very sweet and lovely girl that sebastian is quite, quite fond of. he asked if he could leave town after the party and when i explained the tickets were bought and the trip already planned, he was quite devastated. the girls on the other hand, are quite thrilled, as they came home from school today sporting a beautifully calligraphied envelope sporting their names, and inviting them to a party the day after we get home. jasper is asking if he can come too, and i am trying to explain no. needless to say, jasper don’ lak that at all.

my life has been made into a movie!!!!

i wasn’t allowed to say anything for the longest time, but they are making our lives into a movie! check out the link! an extra bonus if you identify which child is which and who the "uncles" are.

http://www.people.com/people/gallery/0,,20037361,00.html

are you green with envy?

the tape that glues them together

growing up in the lyons household, where sweeties were forbidden, we were given a packet of trident gum every Christmas. not dentyne, which was somehow less healthy for us than trident. pam got cinammon flavoured, graeme got fruit, i was the lucky recipient of the mint flavoured one. they didn’t have cool flavours like spearmint for trident gum in the 70’s,

we knew that gum would be in our christmas stockings. it was a given.

with my children, last Christmas, and for sebastian’s fifth birthday and most recently when i shook off my drears and managed to celebrate the triplet’s birthday (only a month late this year!) i bought them the same present. their favourite present.

cellotape.

or scotch tape.

they love cellotape and liberally apply it to each other, books, beds, dolls (look! mr incredibles is invisible!) and any surface they can find. they ask me to rip the cellotape for them, and if destracted enough, i do.

in my defense, cellotape is much easier to remove from hair than gum is. right mum?

the kids are getting to the point where if i promise them a cool present, they want it to be cellotape. they love cellotape. it can form a house, clothing, swing, accessory…whatever they need it to be. cellotape gets their creativity zipping over time, which is the only reason i allow it, of course. that and the quiet, then giggling it provides them. i love eavesdropping when cellotape creativity is in session.

the kids love when park n shop groceries arrive, because they come in boxes that immediately become cars, beds and homes. however the other day sebastian decided he wanted barbie’s dream house, and out came the cellotape. the boxes were screeched together, and because he couldn’t get the tape to cut off, he left the tape dangling.very cute. 45 minutes of cuteness if i recall correctly.

i stuck with trident, and today have no cavities or fillings. (although i did have a retainer)

what future lies with my cellotape trips and scotch tape seb?

back to the beach

not with frankie and annette, with the kids.

may 1 is labour day in hong kong, and a public holiday. hence, no school. charles had to be in the office, my dad wanted to do a little wandering around the city and practice saying, "tze tze" to all the touts who bothered him overly, and so mum and i looked at each other, shrugged, and made plans to get to the beach.

we didn’t go as early….we arrived at around 11.40am. and of course the kids were starving and fell with savagery upon the peanut butter sandwiches and biscuits. they made whingy sounds about still being hungry and wanting the popcorn i had in my bag, but i ignored those sounds.

the beach was slightly more active today, and fortunately we had friends there, stephanie and her four boys, her best friends judy and john visiting from shanghai and their four boys, and terri and nick, parents of olivia and christopher. the kids played pretty happily, nick was stung by a sting ray on some rocks, jasper enchanted people, carys quietly and determindly built a little sandhouse while sela commanded other kids around her to do the same thing. sebbie bobbed about in the water (some terrible mother forgot earplugs!!!) and a few other things.  at one point, we realised the kids were still hungry and so we ordered pizzas, which the kids were thrilled about. totally made their day. finally we came home, i jumped into the shower and one by one grabbed a child, scrubbed them down and then threw them out to mum who popped them into nightclothes. after this procedure i called charles at the office and despite the phone ringing and ringing i did not hang up. i let it ring and when he finally answered i asked politely where he was and upon hearing he was still at the office at 6.15pm i said, "well i would appreciate it if you came home very soon. enough kids for one day." and of course, soon after he was there.

he and dad made dinner for the kids and sela was so tired she volunteered herself for bed. i love when she does that. very aa of her. sebastian cried at bedtime, mo and grandad blake are going to vietnam tomorrow but we are meeting up with them in a week in phuket and that is exciting, but he was still a bit sad.

me, not sad, just tired.

but still, they had a great time if the amount of sand in their hair and around their bottoms was anything to judge by.

so, how’d you do?

on friday, jasper, sela and carys had another of those nailbitingly awful OT tests over at the duchess of kent.

the duchess of kent, where carys and i faithfully visited twice a week for so long, is now a location i am only at occasionally. i still remember it, but walking through it’s doors, standing in line at the shroff, heading over to the kids unit … it don’t shake my head to clear it of memories each time i’m there. or more pragmatically  — i don’t know the number of steps from the shroff to the ot/pt offices.

carys and jasper and sela were evaluated to see where they were with manual and dextrous tasks like buttoning, zipping, drawing circles and crosses, stacking blocks, etc. last time they were there all three scored a rather unspectacular 34 or some sort score and we were instructed to do lots of threading, stacking, etc at home. easier instructed than done.

i haven’t followed through on those instructions exactly. i’ve tried, and i know that small world christian kindergarten has lots of excellent dextrous toys, etc. but i can’t force the kids to do them, either at school or home. so.

the testing. agonising at times because you are certain your child can to better and you want to force them TO do the task you are certain they are capable of. biting your tongue trying not to insert when your child refuses a task, "i know he can do that…" i am much better in high pressure situations and crises than these sorts of things.

i am happy and proud to announce that carys scored 62 per cent, to be graded as AVERAGE on her testing. keep up the work and bringing out the blocks at home. fair enough. sela, unsurprisingly, scored a lovely 79 percent, and was graded as being above average. i think she feels this is deserved and although she does not know she is aa, she has that "was there ever a doubt?" attitude.

jasper scored 27 per cent.

you read that correctly. 27 per cent.

so why am i writing this blog instead of frantically making appointments with every ot in the sar? because i am convinced that jasper john jingleheimer schmidt failed so spectacularly because he wasn’t paying attention. if he was actually listening and gave a ding dong double damn, i am pretty sure he would be your average bear in the woods. but he didnt, and wont, and so 27 he is. which means a lot more work for me.

previously, 27 was a good number. i moved to hong kong when i was 27 — ’nuff said. however, the gloss has dimmed slightly. i am not so impressed with the jay and his 27. i mean really. saying "i can’t" when asked to draw a circle without trying first? give me a break. that’s not 27 per cent, that’s laziness, where jasper is definitely in the top percentile.

27 per cent indeed.

my mum has been here for a couple of weeks now. she has made herself very useful. we race each other to the computer to check emails, she bemoans over the fact that asian television stations air footie, badminton, horse racing and cricket more than they show golf and tennis, and when it comes to the kids, she is invaluable.

yesterday charles was out of town and mum and i were getting the kids ready for church. it was a day destined to keep the kids out of the house for as long as possible because although they had only been awake for 2.5 hours, i had learned that having them in the house was driving me insane.

the kids managed to open the entire contents of their art and craft supply suitcase and dump it over the floor. they ruined a aqua doodle pad, some markers, drew over their legs and lost caps to markers, and tossed ribbons across the floor. i was horrified. and demanded they clean it up which meant mum and i cleaned it up while chastising them.

and guess what my cheeky jay said to me in part of the "sebastian, did you get that piece of paper? sela did you put that pen away? carys why aren’t you moving faster? jasper! are you clearing up?" tirade?

he had the gall to answer honestly and factually, "no mummy, i’m holding my willy."

that set the tone of the day.

i will share more later. but it was all pretty much like that.