The no longer blue toe

[continuation of The Blue Toe]

Kiefer went for his swimming class as usual. After swimming for a bout 20mins, we found that the clot was not visible anymore. I thought that the blood vessels probably constricted so much that the blue can't be seen. I thought it'll probably reappear when he dries off and warms up.

However, he knocked his toe against the wall of the pool just as he was coming up from the last activity and broke the skin on that toe. It started bleeding. It's been 5 hours and the toe looked normal, no more clot, but the nail looked ghastly white. Think the nail is dead and will probably still fall off. So I think he bled the clot out.

20 min into the swim

The fat crazy toe after we bandaged it.

Kieran venting his frustration

Kieran sometimes has difficulty in expressing himself and he gets himself into such fits of anger. I remember once, sometime late last year, he got himself so worked up and angry over something his cousin did that he stomped upstairs to his bedroom and shut himself there, refusing to talk to anybody. He stewed for so long that he eventually forgot what he was angry about but just knew that he was angry.

Today, he got upset that Kiefer called him a "cheater" while they were playing a game of kick ball (He calls Kiefer a liar when Kiefer says something that he (Kieran) didn't see him do. He still doesn't fully understand the term liar, neither does he understand the use of the word cheater.) He got so upset that he took the toy binoculars that he was wearing and started whacking the car with it! (Thank goodness the binocs were rubberised. He caused only 1 tiny dent in his grandpa's car.) Once he did that, he realised that he was in big trouble. We went through a good 20mins (at least) of scolding and then talking him into owning up to his mistakes. We had to make him go to his grandpa to tell him what happened and to apologise. We refused to go with him and told him that we were upset with his behaviour and that we still love him nonetheless. We also told him that we will wait for him in our room while he goes into his grandpa's to apologise. The whole process took a really long time. He had to learn that he has to pay the consequences for his mistakes and that this was something really small compared to what he may face in future.

The Blue Toe

Hope he learns his lesson this time. I have been telling him not to touch this antique looking telephone that is kept in a cupboard at 外婆's house but he just tries his luck every time. Last Sunday, he finally got hold of it when no one was looking and started playing with it. He accidentally dropped it on his big toe and bruised it big time. It is still a little swollen today and he complains that it still hurts when he puts his shoes one. And so, he has the excuse to wear sandals to school for the last 2 days.

 

The bruise about 5 mins after the accident.

 

After ice-ing it. 2 hours later.

The next day in the afternoon.

After 2 days

Time flies way too fast

It's already 5 weeks into 2012. We've been busy, with work, with school with everything. The boys have started swimming and Chinese classes again, thus the week flies by with us running everywhere.

Took this photo last week. I came back from work early and wanted to take a nap. Small fry woke up as I came back and as usual, he'll always want somebody to snuggle with him when he just wakes up. I was just thinking, it'll be really soon that he'll not want to do this any more.

Quantity time not quality time

It was really heartening to hear the boys say that they like having mummy and daddy home with them even though they get more scolding and smacking when we are home. This confirms my belief that children at this age requires quantity time and not quality time with their parents. They have not much idea of quality time. They are just happy with mummy and daddy sitting next to them while they play. We don't even have to be playing with them.

The stage of don't wants

Kiefer's been doing loads of "don't wants" these days. Sometimes I think that he is just trying to do the opposite of what people want him to do.

Today is one of those typical days:

1st don't want:
Brought him to school with me and he took off his sandals and ran around the staff room. Kept saying "don't want" and refused to put the sandals back on.

2nd don't want:
We were leaving school for lunch. Refused to get into the car because he wanted to "see how Uncle Blee drive off". So the string of don't wants.

3rd don't want:
We parked the car at home and walked to the eating place. And because we didn't park at the eating place, the "don't want" to walk to lunch started.

4th don't want:
At lunch. Only wanted the brown noodles (Pontian wanton mee we had last night). So the don't want to eat started.

5th don't want:
Didn't want to bathe before gege. Didn't want to finish his milk. Then started whining and saying that he wants to bathe later when I said I didn't want to bathe him anymore.

It is really quite frustrating with this phase of "don't wants". Even though the don't wants don't usually last very long (he usually gets distracted after awhile and then continues what needs to be done after the distraction), it really takes us a much longer time than needed to get things done. Just hope that he gets out of this soon. I always think that this boy probably got his terrible 2s late. He was such an angel at 2 years old. All these nonsense only started when he turned 3!! Pray hard for a fabulous 4!! :)

Holidays fly by just like that!

Yes, just like that! Our year end holidays are coming to an end. We spent a good part of it on holiday in California and we had a blast there!

We flew on EVA air and I must say, Asian airlines are always great! The timing of the flight was good too. We left in the afternoon from Singapore and landed at LAX at about 230pm. After collecting our luggages and picking up the call, we got to Ah Yi's house at about dinner time. That meant that we did not have to struggle to stay awake for a long time. We did some light shopping at a nearby shopping place and then went to bed for the light. This really helped in easing the jetlag.

After resting for a 3 days to get over the jetlag, we made the long drive (7 hours) up to San Francisco to meet up with Wendy and family. It is always fun to go on road trips. It is even more fun as Les had to drive on the left! The boys were good on the drive. We only stopped once for lunch and another time for a toilet break. They entertained themselves by drawing (Kieran), watching movies on the iPad squashed between the front seats or taking naps. People are always amazed that our kids never had problems on long drives, but I guess they are just used to being in the car seats and they never knew they could make a fuss! :P 

We started on theme parks in the 2nd week of our holiday. Our first stop was Universal Studios. We enjoyed the studio tours the most. We saw the new King Kong attraction in the back lots. They rebuilt the studio after the last one was burnt down in a fire back in 2008. This new attraction is now a 3D show where we saw King Kong fight with the V-rex to save our tram. It was a fantastic experience.

We next went Disneyland. We spent 3 days at Disneyland and the boys loved the Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster ride. We went on that ride umpteen times and there was no fast pass on it! At California Adventure Park, we loved Soarin' over California. Kiefer just managed to make the 40" height limit on this ride. We probably went onto the ride 3-4 times at least. During one of the times, the ride broke down and we received a fast pass that was good for any of the rides (except Star tours) in the park. That was great because we used it at Toy Story Midway Mania where the queue was forever at least 45 minutes long. Just because we had the pass, we managed to go on that ride a second time.

We bought the boys some Disney pins from ebay for the boys  to do some trading at Disneyland. They had a lot of fun looking for pins that they like. It was a cheap and fun activity for them at DL, especially for Kiefer, when he had to wait around for his gege and daddy to finish their rides. He'll look for pins that he likes and trade them. We bought the pins at ebay for only about $1 a piece and we managed to trade them for beautiful pins that probably cost $6 - $15 a piece.

We drove down to Vegas and San Diego in the following week.The boys have not been to Vegas before and the last time we both went, it was 5 years ago. It was nice to be back there again. We watched 2 shows there. The Blue Man Group was hilarious. It was a musical/ percussion show that stimulated the senses. We also saw Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere. We watched such a late show that I actually fell asleep during the trapeze segment. The 2 boys loved the show, especially the big baby character that was in the show. 

We originally wanted to drive to the Grand Canyon but decided against making the long drive. We did go to Hoover Dam though. Kieran could recall the exact scene from Superman that was filmed there. It was a nice sight-seeing trip. 

 

 In the final week, we were off to Seaworld, San Diego Zoo and Legoland. The boys were actually really looking forward to Seaworld.  Though they still loved the Shamu show, we thought that Seaworld has lost its charm. Both the Shamu and Dolphin shows were quite bad. There was not much interaction between the animals and their trainers. In the Dolphin show, half the show had board divers jumping off the diving boards and also had a macaw (dancer in costume) flying around. However, Kiefer loved looking at the huge walrus at the Wild Artic exhibit. It was obvious that the walrus was really bored as it swam round and round in the same routine. Kiefer kept running up and down, following the walrus' path from outside the glass.

We haven't been back to San Diego Zoo in a while. We actually quite enjoy riding on the open top tram around the zoo. I think there were improvements made to the zoo because I didn't remember it to be so huge. However, the skyride (cable car) was closed and we missed going up on it. The boys enjoyed looking at the gorilla as there are no gorillas in our Singapore zoo.

Legoland was definitely their favourite park in San Diego. We adults love it too. The rides are just so fun. This is the first time Kiefer could drive in the Volvo driving school and he did so well in there. He finally earned his "driver's licence"! :P

After San Diego, we spent another 2 nights in LA and it was back to Singapore. It will be awhile before we can embark on such a long holiday again!

Daily happenings..

We have just a little more time on our hands these days, and so, what have the kids been up to?

The boys started swimming classes about a month ago. They have since gained much water confidence and can now paddle by themselves while clutching onto their swim noodles. After just a month or so of lessons, the 2 of them are as brown as toast now.

Kieran started Chinese class at Tien Hsia this term. After just 7 lessons (#8 was a review session, #9 was a mini recital), he now recognises some 28+ characters and can recite about 6 poems in Mandarin. In fact he attempts to speak in Mandarin more these days. He will point out different vegetables/ fruits in the supermarket and say their names in Chinese. An amazing achievement for someone who once didn't utter a single word in Mandarin!

Both the boys had their end-of-year concert at their kindy last week. Kieran was performing a song called "Barnyard Animals Worship" and he was great as a little brown dog! The song opened with him shaking his little butt, and I thought that it was really cute. He actually warned us prior to the concert that we were not to laugh at his wriggling butt!

This was Kiefer's first concert and we were so proud of him. He was singing and dancing to his song "This little light of mine" and we could see how much focus he put in to get everything right. I thought he was the cutest little kid on stage. When he first came onto the stage, he started looking around for us. We could see his usual look of annoyance (the "why-you-never-let-me-xxx" look) when he could not find us. He was quite a blur bloke actually. We were waving and waving at him but he just didn't see us. Finally, at the end of the segment, as they were getting off the stage, I yelled "Kiefer!". He heard it, spotted us and yelled a really loud "MUMMY!". He was so adorable that the audience started laughing too! We saw his entire face light up when he spotted us. That's my little rascal!

 

Chicken Robot (by Kieran)

Eye (by Kiefer)

AT-AT (by Kieran)

We've finally taken their box of Duplos out of storage and they've been building and building and building the last couple of days. 

Really looking forward to the holidays really starting. Things haven't been slowing down in school for the 2 of us. So we are really looking forward to the break!

Updates on the move

We've moved out of our Punggol place for more than a month already and I would say, I really dislike moving. We had a major move day where the movers came and brought all the major items out of the house but we still spend the next three weeks going back as forth, cleaning out the house of all the little knick and knacks. It was just one troublesome move.

Half of the stuff moved by the movers

I really do miss this large and spacious living room. I miss how the boys could drive their Little Tikes cars around the house.

We've kept most of our things in storage and we were fortunate that we had a free storage space. We could put away our sofa and all other stuff that we'll probably not need in the next 2 years. And if you ask me, I really do not remember what's in there now.

This was the last photograph we took in the house. It was a bittersweet moment. Afterall, this was our first home, and where the kids were born. I still miss it.

We are quite nicely settled in our parents' place (but of cos, there are still boxes to put away) and have come to some sort of new routine. I do appreciate the fact that I do not have to do laundry or to put away clothes and most of all, I get to sleep in a little more in the mornings. This will be something that's going to be a little hard to get adjusted again once we move back to our own place. In the mean time, I'll appreciate all the extra time that I get to spend with the boys.