has sprung

i wish you were in hong kong right now. it was a gorgeous day to appreciate the city, its different nuances and cultures.

after my last day at p&t, i trotted next door and picked up carys, took her downstairs to the car and popped her into the carseat. then i gave jasper, sela and carys smooches (actually by this time they weren’t my kids any more, they were shrekie, fiona and donkeh). i told them i was going to walk to my meeting.

so i started my walk. down from borrett road to bowen road. to cotton tree drive. cross over to hong kong zoo, tell some tourists the bus to take them to the peak is the #15.

the city is drenched in sunlight. birds are singing. in the zoo, the flamingoes rush from one side of the cage to another. the salmon pink of their feathers a colour i havent seen lately, at least not in this massive moving size.

i decide that tomorrow the kids and i (hopefully mc as well) will have a picnic here. there is a jaguar as well, which will make for a good dora the explorer story.

i continue waking, and because i have time to wate before my meeting, i walk past cafe o to one of my favourite places, the hong kong central market. i have blogged about this outdoor market before, which is right underneath the escalators. i buy some gorgeous lilies for andrea, who has been quite sick. i also buy some for our flat, with some gorgeous peonies as well.

i’m now walking with the scent of flowers under my nose, while in my peripheral vision, fish flop in one inch of water, star fruit, grapes, apples, seeds and other fruit and veg are being sold, as vans drive down the middle of the street. oh hong kong, i love you so.

i dart into a stationery shop and buy more painting paper for the p&t. inside the shop everyone is eating lunch, and in true chinese style, everyone is sharing what they have brought. they all pool their meals: mcnuggets, chips, chinese veggies, some sort of meat, rice, and pop pan chicken biscuits, to be enjoyed by all. the shop keeper wipes his hands on his pants, counts off the remainding 17 sheets of paper, totalling $51. he smiles and says, "$50", even before i ask for a discount.

i am bulky now, walking back up to hollywood road, getting bumped into a lot. but there is no malice. i keep walking until i am at my destination, and then i sit down, enjoy my meeting, and head back home.

i drop off andrea’s flowers and ask if she wants to join us….(she doesn’t)….. my lovely & funny friend tara and i are catching a late afternoon movie – JUNO.

then park n shop. the shop is fairly empty, i buy easter eggs in anticipation for the hunt or playground will hold during the easter holidays. and it is good.

and then i came home and i videotaped the kids in the bathtub and sang songs with them, hearing about western park. jasper read me a book, carys told me a story, and sela counted to 20 by twos, while sebastian sang me a song.

my melody. my city. my life.

it’s all so great.

by the time i wake up tomorrow there should be some interesting results coming out of ohio and texas.

until then….

this week i am working at the parent and toddler association…i really like interacting with the little kids. it is for a set period of time, and their mums are there. they’re not my responsibility. it’s the best of all worlds!

the triplets love that i am coming to school with them each morning, even though i am not in their school. yesterday i walked sela and jasper to their classroom. today, i was standing in the front of small world (which is in the same building as ppa and many other non profit organisations in hong kong), and carys was standing there. she disobeyed a teacher’s order, and kept looking at me. miss gail looked at carys and asked, "what would you like carys, you can whisper it in my ear".

after a few seconds she glanced up and moved away and said, "i know what carys would like."

i bent down to carys and she said softly, "i would like you to walk me to my classroom today."

i just knew that she had picked up that i hadn’t accompanied her to class yesterday. little button.

so i took her to class, watched her take her name and stick it on the "I AM HERE" wall…walked her into the classroom and gave her a smooch goodbye.

then i walked up to p&t. and watched two year olds interacting with their mums, and the relationships there.

a two year old needs its mum for so much more than a four year old does.  i saw that so clearly today. and i felt so proud seeing how my kids don’t need me in a varity of ways i hadn’t even noticed.

while i rejoice in my four’s independence – i also sigh. because i can see ways that i am no longer "needed". the changing relationship. i love the different stages. but i know there are some big ones coming, where they will set boundaries, good boundaries.   

as parents, we pray that our kids will see their next birthday. but i think it is normal to feel wistful as each phase slips away, as much as we welcome the new one.

forget the porridge, momma bear … who’s sitting in my chair?

things are going crazy in hong kong.

my micro world is just fine, kids okay (although the triplets took a NAP this afternoon…what does that mean, a NAP?) …but economically, rents have gotten out of control.

our building is a fine example of this.

when we moved into 122 everyone said it was a great deal. and it was. for four years, we have enjoyed living in government quarters with a huge play area for kids, and like minded people as neighbours. unlike many hong kong residences, at 122 we are a real community. we have 122 block parties, barbeques, easter egg hunts, girls nights out, and good times. we are mostly like minded people.

so you can imagine how we felt one year ago when our rent was increased by 50 per cent. it was a blow to the solar plexus. 122 went from being the great deal of the century to a pretty good value for your money.

unlike some of our neighbours who got their rent increases around the same time, we didn’t even bother looking around. why bother, really? moving expenses, we demurred, the cost of travel to school each day, bla bla bla, but what it really comes down to is this is our home. this is the only place we have ever lived as a family.

we live within 300 steps of the hospital where the triplets were born. charles was in this flat the day i told him i was pregnant. this is the only home our children have ever known. these kids are their peeps. they don’t have nearby relatives, but they have andrea, susan, tara, katie, mel, weng, jennifer…and all their kids. this is their safe place. and mine for goodness sake.

so we paid the rental increase. and people kept moving into our building, talking about what a great deal it was, while the rest of us old timers lamented about "the good old days" when the rents were so much lower.

in the past two weeks i found out that the top floor of the building is renting for approximately twice what we are paying currently. today i found out that the fifteenth floor is renting for USD$7.500 per month. the unwritten code of our building says that rents increase $500 HKdollars per floor, which means that when our turn for rental increase comes up, we will be asked to pay about $55,000.(6.5Kusd)

that would be close to 40 per cent increase in what we are currently paying.

if we gave up our flat, which would be the logical thing to do, there would be few options of where we could live. the logical thing to do would be to go home, if we had a job to go home to. but we don’t have a home. so that is not an option.

so where to move to? this is something we are praying about. in the purpose driven life rick warren points out the futility of worrying about things we have no control over and asks how many hours we dedicate to such troubles. i am going to take a stand that i won’t (overly) fret about this. i am going to pray about it, and that is the best and only thing i can do.

but if we did move out, i would feel like the new occupants of 6a were living my life. imposters in tesstown. moving from room to room in a flat that was still mine. how do families leave homes? i know only bricks and mortar, but it is so much more. it is friends, it is love it is my kids joy coming home, changing, and racing off to play happily with their friends and try out different toys.

i don’t want to leave here.

but God knows that.

let’s see how it gets resolved.

tess tooted!

i have just returned from being an exemplary wife. all night long.

a few weeks ago i was walking along the escalators when i saw a sign advertising a newly opened massage place. i would have kept walking if it hadn’t been for the words, "couples massage room". hmmm.

magnificent charles loves massages.

his wife is rather "meh" about them.

magchar thinks they are the bees knees.

his wife tends to get cold and possibly a teensy bit bored. i always think of things and then wish i had a piece of paper to write my ideas or need to follow up on items down on.

anyway…i booked us in the couples room for 100 minute side by side massages. can you imagine! what an act of love!

and i shaved my legs for this stranger, an act of kindness that my husband rarely receives!

i asked charles that he be home by 7pm, and he obliged. he didn’t know where we were going, and he didn’t even mind that we took the bus into town. technically, as it was a date night and it was tess creating the perfect date for charles, the mode of transportation should have been a taxi, but i just couldn’t justify spending $40 when a bus ride into town was $9 for the both of us…right?

i led him up on to the escalators, and he was bemused, intrigued and then ecstatic as we entered into the massage place.

they gave me a little thong to wear and magnificent got boxers, and we changed quickly and the 100 minutes commenced.

it was pretty good, i was cold though….but at one point, thankfully during the massage oils, i tooted. NOT MY FAULT! i think the woman pressed the pressure point in my foot that makes one toot. at any rate, yay, it was not loud enough to be heard over the titanic soundtrack that we were listening to, and it wasn’t more scented than the oils shall we say. magnificent says he never smelt a thing, but he could be lying or he could have been asleep.

i asked for more towels halfway through. 100 minutes is a very long massage. longer if you’re cold. but even the second half was pretty long.

all week long, when i was telling friends about my massage plans, they were impressed. how wonderful, etc.

it was nice, but mainly it was nice because i know how much magchar loves massages. i had so many other ways that i could have spent the money. truthfully, if it hadn’t have been a discount treatment, i am not sure i would have done it. but it was severely discounted…less than $50 canadian per person for 100 minutes of massage…so what is a daughter of frugal blake to do?

afterwards, we went out for thai beef salad and vietnamese pho ga soup. very tasty. heading out of the restaurant i asked magnificent how he wanted to get home. he said "taxi" and home we went. twice a bus passed us that would have taken us straight home, but i didn’t say anything. (or if i didn’t press the point).

exemplary wife! except for the tooting tess bit, but that doesn’t count because he claims he didn’t hear it.

i am very very very somewhat interested in hearing your opinion on this matter.

i belong to a triplet parents discussion group.

a relatively new mum of triplets recently posted to the group asking for assistance on obtaining a handicapped parking tag for her vehicle. although she and her children have no health issues, she feels that her children’s safety is at issue when she is unloading her kids from the vehicle to the stroller, and she is therefore entitled to a parking space.

some fellow mums wrote back and gave her tips on getting the handicapped parking location.

however the majority wrote back in disfavour of this action.

i admit i fall into the second category.

i do not consider my kids handicaps. even if i could drive, why would i take a handicapped parking spot that should be used by someone who legitimately needs it? i don’t argue that getting kids out of a vehicle can be tough and fast moving cars can be a danger, but mums of multiples have the option of parking in far off locations, which also burns calories (YAY!). (obviously the parking lots in hong kong need to be a little bigger to give me a little longer to work off my jlo.)

what do other people think when they see parents of multiples demanding special privileges? someone sent me an email on the topic asking, "what about jon and kate plus eight? they have their own their own designated parking spot." that is their business! between them and the company! they didn’t ask for it, it was given to them. i do see a difference.

besides the fact that my children aren’t handicaps, i do know that handicapped parking spaces are needed by the majority of the people who do have the parking tags. yes, some people do abuse handicapped tags, but that is their choice, their conscience.

so there we go. this will never affect my life because chances are very good i will never drive. but even if i could, i wouldn’t classify my kids as handicaps. and i wouldn’t single them out by describing them as handicapped. as a handicapped person who’s handicap shows itself in very obvious ways occasionally, i want to spare them that "handicapped" label.

gravity

gravity is a funny thing. or not so funny if your name is jasper.

monday night sebastian reported that he wasn’t feeling well. i would have figured that out myself…the old half mast eyes were glassy and the forehead was getting hot. and his gorgeous little back, covered in the occasional freckle.

poor little fellow. i have him some motrin and he settled down. his father wasn’t in town, which upset sebastian more than it usually would have done. he wrestled in his sleep with special blanket and moved around a lot during the night.

especially at one point during the night, when sebastian woke up and decided that he felt like he was going to vomit. he was very very tired, but he managed to lift his torso and turn his head over the side of his bed and vomit.

the problem is, of course, that sebastian sleeps on a bunkbed, and jasper’s bed juts out underneath sebastian’s. and good old gravity demanded that vomit that came out of sebastian’s mouth head downwards straight on to jasper’s bed.

what a dissgossting way to wake up. being vomited on.

can you imagine? poor little jude.

fore!

the three turned four on saturday. it delights me to tell you that this year, i was able to really celebrate their birthday. to delight in them turning four instead of remembering how they nearly didn’t make it to four days old.

we held a party on the playground and invited around 40 kids (nd their parents), which means approximately 70 people attended the party. i am very grateful for the events planning i did when i was a student at mount royal – mum and i did everything the day before the party. cut vegetables for the vegetable platter, made dips, (the party bags had been prepared since tuesday), checked that the candles worked, and friday night i premixed the dry ingredients for the chili i was making for the party, chopped the four onions, pressed the garlic, and got everything together, so the next morning, the preparation time for the chili was minimal. friday night i also made a list of what needed to be accomplished the next morning, and what time it needed to be done. i love being this organised and OH! did it pay off. keep in mind, i don’t drive, so i bought all the alcohol in three shops prior to the party, as well as water, etc.

charles made the cake, and keeping in theme with the party and invitations, it was a shrek cake. when the triplets saw it, two of them were enchanted. one child however, burst into tears and sobbed, "i wanted a princess cake!" hello! this was the first we had heard of it! i reminded this child that the tears & dislike of shrek cake might be hurtful to the father, and the child did not show remorse. briskly carted off to room, child smartened up.

as soon as the party started, aforementioned child cornered me and said with a mouth crammed full of crisps, "i am having a really good time".

it was a good party. my dad did what he does best, he held the plethora of babies that our playground always has, and only very reluctantly relinquished them to their parents. he informed parents that their babies needed to visit canada. my mum suggested that i have more children. i suggested that possibly my other siblings might like to take a turn. each time we took a child up to use the toilet, we took an armful of empty trays or brightly wrapped presents with us.

(i asked sela and carys if they would like another baby and they told me they would like a girl baby. they decided on the name of "baby supergirl". i like it. any child that could be naturally created from my calcium covered ovaries would be pretty superheroic indeed. this child’s head would have like a crusty eggshell on its top.)

my mum had a great time as well, and was incredibly helpful. i was v. grateful to have them there. they were so fantastic, talking to so many people.

the food was fantastic. i had made the chili in the slow cooker. i had been worried about the weather and chili is such a nice warming food. other appetisers were also warmed and i had done the prep work the day before, but the cheese dips were fantastic (ie: none were left over), and the platters were great. but you know what i learned? no matter how many bags of crisps you buy, the kids will finish them off.  it was astonishing to watch the kids polish off 4 bumper bags of doritos and 6 bumper bags of crisps. and they were still looking around for more when other parents told me to NOT put any more out!

the girls wore their pink tutus and jasper wore his buzz lightyear costume. the girls were chuffed that the weather was a little warmer because, "if the weather is very cold we have to wear stockings and pants with our tutus and then jumpers. we won’t look like ballerinas."

did i mention that the girls got their first "real" haircuts?

did i mention that they are four?

everything that comes with four?

i survived three kids being three. and even more importantly, their survival no longer has such an impact on me.

this year of theirs is off to a great start.

fore!   

sibling sets

housekeeping items:

amber – we pronounce daughter #2’s name KAHR-ys. the traditional welsh way. the majority of people we know pronounce it care-ISS. doesn’t matter to me!

on the friendship blog – a couple of you touched on it and got it right on the head, as did a couple of emails and one facebook message – "People want to be part of the fun. If you are radiating it, they want to be part of it. How loud you are being doesn’t make a difference, how happy you look and how "simpactico" you seem does."

**************************

as i mentioned in an earlier blog, charmaine and i saw, "no country for old men", which swept at the oscars earlier today.

as they trotted up to collect their first academy award of the night, it struck me that part of the coen brothers success (and even their failures are arguably successful if they make money and make people like me laugh) is that they are siblings.

famous siblings.

let’s look past the jackson five, hanson and lord forbid, donny and marie, to ernest and julio gallo, the grimm brothers and even, harvey and bob weinstein, who named miramax studios after their parents, miriam and max.

what is necessary for siblings to work together like that? why would they want to?

the trust issue. the ability to fight with the person and know you have to make up, because there is no hope of getting Christmas or birthday presents or peace of mind from your parents (who are probably partially funding you) unless you do. you know the person’s style of thinking, there are few surprises about them left. you probably have similar ways of thinking and similar senses of humour, which causes great think tank sessions.

as a parent, i would be DELIGHTED if my kids worked together. i would be there everyday, completely unwelcome and they would never get any work done because i was being so nosy and making suggestions that they didn’t want/need.

what would they do? should i have gone into business with graeme at some point? doing what? making illegal copies of madonna songs? writing archie comic scenarios?

could my child be filled with enough creativity and talent to start a business or company? how wildly scary and exciting for them. forget university, i better start saving money for this now. whether it was successful or not (remind me i said that in 20 years), i would love it if my kids loved each other and respected their siblings talent enough to go into business together. i think that would be fantastic.

what IS it about girl power?

while in canada, i spent some great hours with uber good friends charmaine and anne.

anne and charles they are magnifcent friends and have such great teenage stories on each other, back when he wore an ascot and they couldn’t walk through a door together because her helmet hair and shoulder pads made it impossible. when i married charles, i was lucky enough to inherit one of his best friends as well…lucky me!

charmaine and i have a more recent history, and like anne and i – we have a love. and we laugh. and we talk about our husbands, our lives, and our families. do we have favourite children? does it count as a favourite if we worry more about one than the others? we have very similar husbands, and my husband thinks charmaine is about as good as it gets because of her computer knowledge and her savvy business skills (www.adoptionprofiles.ca). charmaine and i get each other. it’s just love.

i noticed a phenomenon when i was out with charmaine and anne. (the three of us have never gotten together…that would be a fun time)…i would be with one friend or another, and we would be looking at a book, exclaming over an eyeshadow, debating alternate ways of making a pastry we were eating, bascially just rejoicing in being with a friend and being together and smiling and laughing and being in the same time zone and knowing our time was short which made it even more precious, and just being able to look at the other person and know that there infront of you was a friend that you loved and trusted and even though you knew their secrets, they still were wonderful in your eyes…when all of a sudden, a salesperson or hotel clerk would swoop down upon us.

and try to join our party.

what is it about being joyous with a friend (and not really in a loud way, unless i was requesting a bagel at the hotel before the free breakfast had ended, i might add) that makes people, particularly other women, want to be with you.

the allure of deep friendship is potent. it attracts people. i watched it happen. salespeople followed us out of their stations, just to continue conversing with us. wanting to know if charmaine and i were sisters. advising anne on which power point eyeliner to buy.

we’re not carrie and crew from SATC, but those threads of female friendship seem to magnetically attract women. especially when your contentment was showing, as ours, mine, was.

do you find this happens to you? there was no alcohol involved. this wasn’t a drink thing. this was just other women (we won’t even talk about the men who so did not stand a chance), wanting to be part of it. i’m now asking myself, do i find myself responding to girl circles?

if conversations are loud, i might go up a notch or two and respond in like, but i don’t think i am pulled into the force field of friendship. i observe it, and it makes me smile (or send a text message…), but i don’t feel the innate need to prolong by interaction in it, which is what i found happening time and again while i was with my friends.

it feels great to have love with my husband, that’s a given, but you know, when with girlfriends i love, especially those i don’t see so often, sometimes i get a little sentimental. i just love my friends. and everyone else seems to as well.

anyone?

if you live in edmonton you get to be cool?

sister pam had a birthday on valentine’s day – nothing so unusual about that as she has a birthday on valentines day every year.

but sister pam is a most unusual person.

to those of you who do not know her, sister pam has led an eclectic life, and dabbled quite seriously in some illegal activities during her colourful (ie: electric neon) youth. in her case, her "youth" lasted until she was about 25 or so.

sister pam is a very funny person. and when we get together, she tells stories (or "if what i have of a bloody memory serves me right this is what happens") and tells us her recollections of the bad old days. except for the bad old days are so incredibly funny.

here are some sample stories:

– got her first hickey and was tipsy and was so scared of dad’s reaction that she intelligently broke a ball point pen and rubbed the ink all over her neck,

– how one time after an initial brush with marijuana she could have sworn that she saw leprauchans jumping out of a bar of irish spring soap

there are some readers to this blog who will completely fail to get the humour of these stories, and will harumph. that’s okay, we probably don’t see the humour of your funny stories. it takes all sorts.

pam makes stories wonderful. i occasionally, especially if i have just been around the kids, i try to put on a disapproving face but i can’t hold it. i just give the kids popcorn, shove them out the door and ask her to start the story again. she’s just too funny. love love love my sister.

she’s great. she will never judge anyone, she will help anyone in need, and she is GREAT in a crisis. (she says this is because she caused so many). but seriously, after graduating with her BSc in Nursing, pam was offered jobs in the operating room. she had to choose which job she wanted. how often does that happen? RARELY. but supervisors and doctors saw how cool* and adept she is. so pam, you keep on making us laugh, but i hope you are laughing now, at the life you are creating for yourself. and the best is yet to come.

* she is every definition of the word cool.