Author: Doris

Today, during the noon time, Mom and Dad called grandpa and said Happy Father’s Day to him. He is 97 now. He was very excited when we called. That made me to recall, last X’mas, we (Joseph. Diana, Arlinda, Cassandra, Big Brother & Sister) had dinner together in a restaurant. He was very slow but managed himself with the help of his two lovely grand daughters. We were very glad he was there. He was very emotional and almost choked when Mom handed a red-envelop to him. Mom was really shaken up even when the dinner was over. I could see the sweat coming out on Mom’s face & neck when grandpa struggled to take his breath back. Mom was really scare at that time. Althoug, it was okay few minites later and Grandpa did enjoy the dinner.

Your grandpa is a very strick man and bad temper, with little self-control, I think. He only receives elementary school education and with fewer means than I have. But, without him, I could never have the tools that I have today because he emphasized and insisted on education. Sometimes, just a little bit too much. Once I challenged him about my math. Basically, I said don’t expect me to have better math scores if you never had one. I got your bad genes. He was really mad and I got a lot of bruises on my body with pain everywhere which lasted several days.

As you know I was far from the favorites among our 8 siblings. And I believe I still am. Even with that, I always think that it is not easy to raise 8 kids even-handedly. Looking back, I think I was really an outcast, nobody-likes-type when I was young. In addition, grandpa probably did not have a lot of other options to begin with. It wasn’t that bad considering that all his 8 kids received higher education. For that, I am really in debt to him (your grandpa), even though I still have had strong feelings and disagreements with him about his ways of raising us.

But in short, I am proud of him and hope he has a wonderful Father’s Day this year and many more years to come.

We took Jeremy to the beach for Father’s Day. Vince promptly went
running to another family to see if he could integrate himself into
their little group. Sometimes he succeeds fantastically and he meets
great new friends. Today he played with another family for quite a
long time, but I couldn’t figure out if the were even really talking
to him. He is not daunted by people ignoring him. He will sit right
next to anyone and just start playing with them. It was a really
great day, not too hot and we even brought Ruby who hasn’t been
swimming in a long, long time. It was her first time seeing the
ocean. She loved swimming in the water and rolling around the sand.
I’m also never sure what Edda will like, but it seems like the beach
is one of the things that she loves. She likes to sit in the sand
and have the waves come over her legs and she likes to grab the sand
and eat it. All smiles today at the beach from our little soybean.

We also went out for our Sunday afternoon date. Gowri, our
babysitter, put a little dot on Edda’s head for protection from evil.
I told Gowri that we need all the protection we can get these days.

Today is Father Day. Every one has a father. My father was an ordinary man. He did not talk much, he just worked very hard to support family and educated his kids. I was born few years after my parents married. At that time, people should have baby soon after marriage. Otherwise, husbands had the right to have another woman in oder to have his kids. I heard from my relatives that mom begged my father to wait a couple more years which I thought my father did and, under those circumstances, I was born. My Daddy was very happy to have his first child. My mother told me when I was sick with running nose, my father used his mouth to clean my nose. There was no Kleenex those days. My Daddy specially designed and made a carriage to fit his bicycle. He carried me from village to village when I was an infant. My grandfather passed away when my Dad was very young. I did not see my grandfather.

Since my father was the eldest son in the family, he had to take care of the family- his mother, younger brother, and two sisters. So he left village to learn how to do business when he was a teenager. Three years later, he opened his own store. But, it was not easy for him to run a business. One of my father’s friend suggested to find a job on ships since my father was a very handy man. So he left home to work on ships. For first 6 months, he was on probation and had no salary and, in addition, he had to pay his own food. It was a very difficult time. My mother helped to take care of me and ran family farm at village. Six months later, my father had his first pay check and our life changed for the better. He bought my mother and me lots of fancy stuffs we had never seen before. All these stories were from my mother. He never said anything about it.

I only remembered one thing he said about his work at ship. Once the machine to make the drinking water on the ship was broken, he had to fix it. However, there were no parts available. He had to make the part from scratch. He made it with few tools availabe on the ship and his boss was very happy and impressed.

Life on ship was very boring. I visited his ship and stay overnight when I was a graduate student at the JHU. It was in 1967 or 1968. My roommate gave me a ride to New York city and dropped me off on the street nearby the terminal. Then I took a taxi to my father’s ship. It was pretty dangerous area. I did not think I would have the courage to do it now. My Daddy let me used his suite and we made Wanton soup for snake that night. I wrote him the first check out of my scholarship. He joked about check and I knew he was very happy and proud.

Although my father did not have much education, he did provide his kids with education. Secondly, my father did not like me to marry a man working on ship. Since our family has lots of friends who worked on the ships and they would like me to get married to their sons instead to going to college. My parents did not do that. Especially, my father did not like that idea. He wanted me to marry a man working in the office and be home every day. He said with both college graduates, working together are the best.

I just stop here and say Happy Father Day.

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.