Month: June 2006

A momentary lull in the weekend’s activities initiated a downward
spiral of our moods. Sometimes when you don’t know what to do next,
everyone gets a bit grouchy and moody. Then I take a longer nap than
I should and end up feeling groggy and uninspired.

It all started when Edda slept through her therapy appointment.
One moment she was looking at soap bubbles, the next moment, she was
asleep in her chair. While she slept through a session which they
generously offered not to charge us for, Jeremy got a laundry list of
things that we should be doing with Edda and a long discussion about
how far she is from achieving object permanence – which
basically is the ability to remember that an object is there even
after you cover it with a towel – a skill which any competent
8-month-old can do. It’s pretty distressing to hear how far
intellectually your 27-month-old is from an 8-month-old, enough to
send one into a funk. But lack of cleverness aside, I’m feeling
better now, about 6 hours after the botched therapy session and we
made dinner, had ice cream and went to the park and filled our
evening with regularity and good times and hugs and kisses. I’m even
pretty philosophical about Edda’s lack of object permanence. She’s
like the Buddha. She’s past material things, she has transcended the
need for objects and nothing is permanent anyways. Perhaps she knows
better than the rest of us who hang on desperately to our material
possessions and try to remember where object were last placed. Now,
where did I put my keys?
A bright spot this afternoon was the gift from my secret pal!
Hooray for packages! Everyone got into the act…
The first thing we saw when we opened the package was Pop Rocks!
(Mom and Dad – Pop Rocks are candies that go Pop! Pop! Pop! on
your tongue) Jeremy was pretty excited and the kids have never had
Pop Rocks before and Vince was excited to try it. We dredged up that
old urban myth about the kid who ate 5 packages of Pop Rock and then
drank a Coke and his stomach exploded.. Ha ha ha!!

Vince loves the Pop Rocks!

Here we give Pop Rocks to unsuspecting Edda.

She didn’t enjoy it as much. She looks a bit worried.

Secret pal, you are so sweet. So generous! Thank you for being
the highlight of my gloomy day. Jeremy signed for the package and he
was sure that he knew your secret identity because your name was on
the receipt, but then I told him it was your secretary and not you.
Jeremy is very jealous of people who have secretaries. He really
needs one, he’s pretty disorganized and forgetful and doesn’t really
know how to spell, but he’s never had a job that came with an admin,
I think he’d have to be promoted at least 3 times to Vice President
with Large Budget of Something Very Important or something. Jeremy’s
dad has a secretary in New York and it is not infrequently that we
call her in New York from Singapore to do us a favor with random
paperwork crap that we have to do being Americans without an American
address.

The week is over! I have to say, this was a really relaxing week.
The kids were well, Edda had a short days at school and Vince had no
school, so there was almost no rushing in the mornings, we got to
take our time and make it to school, no problem. Today was the last
day of Edda’s 2-week intensive therapy at her school and on this last
day, Vince fully participated. We had slowly encroached on Edda’s
school activities until Vince finally realized that hanging out with
Edda’s class was more fun than anything I could offer.
Here’s Edda with her teacher Ms. Eden before class started.

Then there was occupational therapy with Alan, balloon grabbing
and kicking and tossing.

The best part of the class was the finger painting part. Oh what
a mess. You see Vince making the mess too? Vince is great at Edda’s
school. Most of the kids in Edda’s class are not verbal and some of
the kids are a bit odd with their unusual behaviors, but Vince take
it all in stride. Today he sat next to J. (the blonde kid between
Edda and Vince) and for most of the class and J. would be tapping or
grabbing Vince’s shoulder or arm over and over again and Vince would
calmly take J’s hand in his own hand and hold it for a while until
his hand calmed down and then let it go gently – all without
looking away from the story that Ms. Eden was telling.

In the afternoon, we went to our therapy center for a session,
Edda had a nice time and Vince joined in at the end. Sometimes when
I go to this therapy place and I wait in the waiting room, I listen
to the other moms talk about their kids and I can just hear the worry
about their kids and I usually want to tell them to put it all in
perspective and that it isn’t all bad. Many kids who go to this
therapy place seem to have no visible problems. They seem to
walk/talk/play well while they wait in the waiting room. I know
that some problems are invisible and a few minutes with a kid won’t
tell you everything that it complicated with their lives. Today
there was a mom there who was worried that her daughter liked playing
by herself alone in her room and that, even though she’s completely
affectionate with her parents, it takes her 2 or 3 visits with a
person before she feels comfortable enough to open up to the new
person. Her daughter is very bright, just likes keeping to herself
(an engineer perhaps?). The mother was actually so concerned about
this behavior that she could not consider having another child
because she isn’t courageous enough. The other mom was concerned
because her son goes up to other kids on the playground and yells
obscene words at the other kids, but can’t figure out why no one will
be his friend. I know that everyone’s problems do fill up the space
in their heads so even if you have a small problem but it’s your only
one, you can brood about it forever. I’m still hoping that someday
Edda will be able to climb stairs and say a few words, or if she
can’t say anything, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to figure out a way
to understand each other. Maybe somehow indicating a yes or a no to
a question. That would be great.

Here are the flowers and daddy at office. Daddy gave me a dozen of roses. He said without me he can not be a father. Thanks.

I’m really enjoying Vince’s summer break. I feared that with all that time off from school, he’d be bouncing off the walls, but it turned out not to be the case. We get a few hours together without Edda while she is at school and both of us enjoy the time together. Vince plays with Edda’s classmates before school starts and also sits with circle time and sings a bit before he and I scoot off to do other things.

Last weekend, we were home. What a surprise to see such beautiful clematis. I was in a good mood and, therefore, replaced our mailbox to go along with it. Mom is always very sweet. Here is the proof.

Katherine left yesterday for Hong Kong. I had read on the airport website that there were nature trails and playgrounds in Terminal 1 where Katherine’s flight was going to leave from, but all the attractions were located inside security, but you could see them from the non-secure part. Vince wanted to purchase a flight so we could go inside, but we didn’t do that. The playground was a McDonald’s playground and the nature trail was a glorified smoking area, so I don’t think we missed much.

We got Edda’s blood drawn to ship to Texas. We arranged it through the Children’s Hospital here. We got our geneticist to come in first thing Monday morning to look through the paperwork and also we got the head of the lab to come and personally take the blood samples for labeling for the courier, we even got the tracking number for Fed Ex and everything. The paperwork from Columbia was full of errors, our mailing address was wrong, Jeremy’s ethnicity was wrong and they indicated the wrong test! So we went through everything carefully and corrected all the paperwork and then sent it off. We needed to wait to do it early in the week because they didn’t want the sample traveling to the US over the weekend or to get to Texas on Friday. But Jeremy reports that Edda’s blood is on a van heading to the hospital as I type this…

Hmmm, what else is going on? Not much.

Well Jeremy came home with a surprise for Vince:

His first “adult” legos. Hmmm, I sense we are entering a new era.

Jeremy brought me back this interesting-looking thing from Johanna:

It’s a banana guard! Any sized banana will fit into it and I can stuff it in a diaper bag without getting it all squashed! Pretty clever…

Today, during our Sunday date, Katherine, Jeremy and I went to a really good vegetarian restaurant and ate fake meat. They did a really nice job of it for both texture and taste (fish and pork). Then we tried to go hiking, but it was pouring rain, so we went to the Bukit Timah Nature and hung around their visitor center which was just filled with monkeys trying to steal food from hikers lunches. We even saw a couple of mother monkeys with babies clutching onto their tummies by grabbing onto their fur. We tried to take pictures, but they were very fast and it was a bit dark and they were about 10 feet away which means they were pretty close, but not close enough to get a good photo.

Edda came home with a bunch of crafts today – a pink pig mask, a hat made from a bowl and construction paper and a horse made from Styrofoam cups. It’s so cute to have these little art projects in my house that are from Edda even though I know she didn’t really do most of it. I know that the teachers patiently take Edda’s hand and dip it into paint and smear it all around so that she’ll have a chance to touch the different textures and then they take the time to carefully cut out all the eyeholes and the teeth and do all the gluing and then carefully put it into bags for us to take home. It’s really sweet and I can’t believe I get so emotional over random pieces of kid art.

Edda slept so well this afternoon, I thought something was wrong with her. Usually she startles awake pretty easily, but she was asleep when it was time for therapy and I practically buckled her into her car seat asleep. But she’s her regular self now, so I guess she was just really tired. I even had a chance to take a picture, she looks like she did when she was an infant.

Vince made peanut butter and mustard sandwiches for dessert. He was very proud of them, but thankfully, he forgot to make us eat them. After he went to bed, we noticed that the bread was also moldy. Not the best dessert ever.

We had a nice playdate at Ethan and Eugene’s house. It started a bit rough because Edda was crying, but once the air conditioning was turned on and she got some porridge into her and a nap, she was peachy!

Katherine and Vince made dinner together…

Well, last night I went over to Ronnie’s cause I was bored out of my mind. I cooked a pizza there, and his oven’s lower heating coil is broken. So my pizza came out with a toast top, and a really really soft doughy crust. Not exactly the pizza i had in mind, but whatever.

We watched the pilot episode of “How I Met Your Mother” where we find out that Robin does not end up with Ted, altho the writers make them into the whole Ross/Rachel dynamic.

Also, here’s a photo of all our Apple equipment. From left to right, my 15″ Powerbook G4, Ronnie’s 15″ Macbook Pro, Ronnie’s 20″ Intel iMac, and Ronnie’s work machine, a 17″ Macbook Pro. Of course, our iPods are there – 2 60gig iPods with video, and 1 3rd gen iPod. All told, some $9500 worth of Apple junk. They did a good job brainwashing us.