Vanessa and Ian have been quite miserable to be stuck at home all day. Last evening, Vanessa was bugging me to fix up her 3-D puzzle. I had just bought it earlier in the day. I’ve seen a larger version of the same puzzle at another shop selling for somewhere close to $30. I thought it was much too expensive. While out shopping yesterday, I spotted the same puzzle going for $19.90, and the smaller version I eventually bought for $14.90.

The bigger version, apart from being larger in total dimensions, also had more pieces. The information printed on the box said it’ll take about 150-180 mins of assembly time. The smaller version would take 120-150 mins. I figured, the kids are not going to have that long an attentino span, so I’d better get the smaller version. Besides, it’ll be better that the completed model not take up too much space. Space is always precious. The less space these things take, the more of them I can build.

So Vanessa and I got started on the model. I think it’s still somewhat too advanced for her, so I had to do the reading up of instructions and most of the heavy assembly work. But Vanessa could help out removing pieces for me, and poking out the holes within the pieces. We went on and on. Not unexpectedly, her attention started to wane. It’s not entirely her fault, I guess, because there was something on TV and it was also demanding her attention.

Ian, wanted in too. I gave him the simplest of jobs. He doesn’t really know how we were trying to build the model, and I was much too afraid that in his carelessness he would end up tearing or breaking something. Most of the time I just told him to watch carefully so that he could do it the next time. It made him feel like he was doing something important so, well, he didn’t hound me too much.

After almost 1.5 hours (I think?), we were finally done. Under 90 mins. Ahead of the expected 120-150 mins. I suppose I ought to be doing it much faster than the expected audience. My first 3-D puzzle. It’s actually not complicated at all, it’s just a matter of following the instructions. Totally unlike doing, say, a jigsaw puzzle.

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Nevermind that everyone else in the class are girls, all wearing pink ballet costumes, and that his bright yellow T-shirt and blue shorts doesn’t even blend in, Ian is oblivious to the fact that he’s sticking out like a sore thumb.

It’s only because this is the first lesson that the teacher allowed parents to sit inside the studio. Ian was with me then. While I stood aside to not get in the way of the class, Ian was quite the opposite, very eager to join in the lesson. Lucky for him that the teacher did not object.

Just look at what he’s doing, following the teacher’s instructions.

Here, Vanessa is trying to tell him it’s not his class. “Ian, don’t copy us. It’s not your class, go stand behind!”

Clearly, he does not care.

I wonder why there are no boys. There are male ballet dancers too, right? I didn’t check if this class was specifically for girls, or that there just happened to be no boys signed up for the class.

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For this 5th birthday, I was deciding between getting a bicycle or a pair of rollerblades for Vanessa. It’s about time for her to start learning some of these skills. My Dad made it a point that both me and my sister learnt how to ride bicycles, and I think it makes sense that my kids should too. I always assumed that cycling was a very basic activity that everyone should know. (I found out I am quite wrong. There are a good number of adults who, well, make it to adulthood and have yet to learn how to cycle.)

The other option, rollerblading, was something that I wanted to do myself. I haven’t been rollerblading for many years. At least 8 years, I think. What better way to go back to rollerblading than teaching my own kids to rollerblade, and then later on we can all go rollerblading together! Rollerblading is also probably cheaper than cycling. Rollerblade rental probably costs more than bicycle rental, but rollerblades cost less to buy than bicycles. (To me, bicycles means either a “road bike” or a “hybrid bike”.) But the problem with rollerblades for children is that they will outgrow them very fast. At least I think so.

Another point to consider is also which skill is more “important”, and which other one is easier to pick up later in life. As I said earlier, I considered cycling a basic activity that I assume everyone should know. It also seems like cycling involves a very steep initial learning curve. When you can’t cycle, you just try and try to figure out how to do it. Then one day, you suddenly can cycle. From that point on, cycling is easy. Children supposedly manage this better, because, the theory is that they are less afraid to fall. I’m not sure about that for my kids though. Both Vanessa and Ian seem like very cautious kids. (Isaac is still too little yet… he’s yet to flip over…)

So, anyway, I asked Vanessa. Would she want to rollerblade or ride bicycle? She didn’t think very long before she settled on cycling. I asked a few times, on different occasions, just to “confirm” her choice. It was decidedly a bicycle she wanted.

My next task was to figure out where to buy the bicycle. It just happened that on the way back from a recent excursion with her child care centre, I noticed there was a bicycle shop nearby to the child care centre. They had plenty of children’s bicycles lined up neatly in front of the shop. I ended up going there, since it was convenient, and I didn’t find any other good alternatives.

This shop that I went to is Bike Haus. The helpful staff suggested a few bicycles that were suitable for Vanessa. One suggestion was a white-red bicycle that, they suggested, is “neutral” coloured so that eventually Ian could take over the bicycle too. However, Vanessa had her mind set on a pink coloured strawberry themed bicycle. That’s the bicycle we got.

Bike Haus has two branches, both located along Bukit Timah Road. The one we went to sold all types of bicycles, except road bikes. The other one sells only road bikes.

I used to cycle road bikes. I think the last time I did that regularly was some 15 to 20 years ago. I don’t have that road bike anymore. The technology behind road bikes has progressed tremendously since. So many new things for me to learn about if I want to get a road bike again. The most shocking thing is the price. At Bike Haus, it seems like road bikes typically cost upward of $2K. For under $2K, you’ll have to settle for something like this:

Yes, a used bike for just under $2K. Awfully expensive sports. I think this isn’t the right place for me to go bike shopping. But it seems like you can’t get a working road bike  for lesser than $500 or $600 anywhere else.

Anyway, the next task for me now is to figure out how to teach Vanessa cycling. When you already know how to cycle, it becomes something you “just know”. It’s not easy to translate that knowledge into some instructions you can feed to someone else. I can cycle on my road bike hands-free, and I can even make U-turns while hands-free. It’s just a simple matter of balance and control. But I don’t know how to explain that.

Happy birthday baby #1!

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So, it’s an excursion for the two kids, and an opportunity for me to finally go to this place that many people have been talking about. Vanessa and Ian were excited (though I must say they’re always excited about going out anyway), and the day got off to an early start despite them having slept late the night before.

Our first order of business was… breakfast. Happy Meal at the happy place.

Ian used to love the hotcakes, but it seems his taste is now beginning to change. He’s not so fond of it anymore. He took some hotcakes, then decided he’ll go for my sausages instead (my usual order is the Hotcakes with Sausage meal).

With breakfast done, we headed to the child care centre. Ian was, oddly, especially quiet. His teacher commented too. Ordinarily he would be talking non-stop. The school took a few moments to get things organized before we loaded up the buses and got on our way to Farmart.

There was a slight drizzle in the morning, but by the time we arrived Farmart, the weather was clear and the sun was beginning to peek out from behind the clouds. (My camera phone isn’t too good about capturing shots with such high dynamic range… so parts of it are a little too dark to make out.)

The educational tour was conducted by Uncle William (Mr William Ho), who calls himself “The Quail Man of Lim Chu Kang”. He owns “Uncle William’s”, which mainly sells quail and gamebird products.

I must admit the “classroom lesson” was quite educational for me too. I hadn’t known that quails were such good business. A fertilized quail’s egg hatches in 16 – 18 days, and a chick grows into an adult in 45 days. Female quails lay one egg a day on 4 out of 5 days. They have a “useful service life” of about three years, before they are sold off to become someone’s dinner.

Oh yes, I won myself a tray of 10 Omega-3 eggs for answering correctly the temperature maintained inside the incubator machine (37.8°C). Heh, fun for myself too. The two kids were, honestly, not terribly excited at that point anymore because of the heat and humidity.

After the lesson, we moved on to do some eating: quail eggs, quail meat, and chicken nuggets. Ian was receptive to the quail eggs and chicken nuggets, but Vanessa only wanted her own pistachios she had brought along for the excursion. They both finished their packets of Milo, and lots of water. Yeah, the weather was really hot.

The last part of the excursion was to the animal area. It’s the part that both Vanessa and Ian aren’t too excited about. For some reasons, they are both terrified. Both stayed well away from the goats, when other children were eagerly pressing forward for try feeding them. At some point, a parrot in the animal area let out a loud shriek, and that sent Ian fleeing away screaming for me… forgetting that I was originally just by his side and he had just ran away from me.

So that was it for the educational tour. As we walked through Farmart, I realized that there were a large number of businesses setting up shop there. Too many. I wonder how many visitors they would actually get. I realize that some businesses don’t depend on walk-in customers, and some others that do will have customers who bother to come to this rather out-of-the-way location. But what about, say, businesses like a fish spa?

Or a health food company? Balloon company? Wine shop? It seems rather unusual to me for them to set up shop in this place.

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We have three kids! Most people are quite surprised to hear we have three children. We are certainly doing much more than the national average of 1.20 (or 1.08 amongst Chinese). I am, myself, also quite amazed that we’ve come to have three beautiful children, especially when I look at them enjoying each other’s company. Sure, Vanessa and Ian fight from time to time, and little Isaac is stil oblivious to everything, but looking at a photo like this, I can just imagine how much fun they are going to have with each other.

I’ve been prepping Vanessa and Ian about how things are going to be with Isaac around. Vanessa seems to be very happy to become a big sister to her two younger siblings. Her play activities includes pretending to be Mummy. She also contributes ideas about how she can help look after Ian when, in time to come, we all go out together. She’s learning to pick up some responsibilities.

Ian, at this time, is probably too young to become a big brother. He probably sees Isaac as another playmate-to-be. In his eyes, the playmate-to-be doesn’t do much at the moment. We’ll see how it goes when Isaac is ready for his first “gai gai”.

Two kids is quite easy to manage, even on my own. Then, how about three kids? Since Vanessa and Ian can walk on their own, and more or less obey instructions, I imagine it would not be too difficult. The major complication I can see is mainly when they have to go to the toilet. Vanessa needs to be trained to go to the toilet on her own. Ian still wears his diapers when he goes out, so that’s not so much of a problem.

We’re now officially in the three-kids club, and officially in line with Singapore’s “Have Three or More (if you can afford it)” population control programme of 1987. Oh, dear Gahmen, we have three and we can barely afford it. Please help us out more generously.

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So after years of trying to coax Vanessa to “befriend” Ronald McDonalds, on this day she finally agreed to stand next to him to take a photo. Ian decided he will still keep a little distance, and stood slightly further away. But anyhow, I think they are finally warming up to Ronald McDonalds.

We have breakfast at McDonalds from time to time. Our favourite order is the hotcakes. The kids will share a Happy Meal with hotcakes, and I’ll have the adult sized hotcakes meal. In the past, they used to share a single Happy Meal, and still I had to help them finish it. In recent months, they’ll clean up the single Happy Meal, and also the hash brown from my meal (on top of the hash brown that already comes with the Happy Meal).

Soon, they’re going to each have to have their own Happy Meal. Hmm, and then when baby Isaac grows up enough to join in… our order combo will have to change.

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You don’t have to go over to Sentosa for the famed foam party at Cafe del Mar. There’s one happening right here in the mainland too, right in the heart of town. Well, almost. It’s just outside the main downtown shopping belt. It happens in front of Tanglin Mall, at the junction of Tanglin Road and Grange Road.

This is a family-friendly foam party, of course. Completely unlike the one at the (more or less) southern tip of continental Asia.

If you don’t already know, Tanglin Mall has this annual festive feature of simulated snowfall at their Christmas tree showpiece in front of their building. This year, the snowy event will run everyday from 19 Nov 2011 to 2 Jan 2012. There will be simulated avalance everyday from 7:30pm to 7:45pm, followed by snowfall from 7:45pm to 8pm. On weekends and public holidays, there are additional show times from 8:30pm to 8:45pm for the avalanche, and 8:45pm to 9pm for the snowfall.

It’s just soap bubbles. Of course, you didn’t really expect snow in Singapore right? It’s great fun for the kids.

Vanessa was pretty happy with the snow from the start. It’s not the first time she’s been to this snowy event. Ian, however, was a little apprehensive at the start. I think he didn’t like the very noisy snow making machine (i.e. the soap bubble blower). But oh well, he eventually warmed up to the snow and happily got himself all soaped up.

The two kids are getting big enough to enjoy these activities. We went to for the Chuggington train ride at Marina Square at the start of the month. They’ve also been to see Angry Birds at Ngee Ann City, and Barney and Friends at United Square. So far, I’ve only heard requests for a repeat of the Chuggington train ride. I guess that’s the one they love the most. Gotta find some time to bring the kids to a couple more of these festive activities.

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Sometimes I think my two babies must be the cutest and most charming babies around. When we take them out shopping, they get offered free popcorn, free kuehs, free raisins, free specials that aren’t even on the menu, free this and that. Hmm, okay, not free money yet, that would be something I would love to have. But certainly plenty of free things.

So like last night, while out at Marina Square, they received yet another treat. There is this Chuggington train ride on level 3 of the mall. It runs on “tracks”, which are basically stickers pasted on the floor, in a loop that goes around the children’s play area and one of the voids, up to the set of escalators nearer to the Centre Stage. It’s a really cool looking train that the kids will love. Yes, and it caught Vanessa’s and Ian’s attention, of course.

The problem is, it’s part of the mall’s events leading up up to Christmas, and these rides just started yesterday evening only, and they had some sort of launch and everything was by-invitation only. We weren’t invited. We could look, but well, we could not be a part of the festivities.

The kids were there for the playground anyway, and they like the playground, so I explained to Vanessa and Ian that we’ll do the train ride another time, and they went on to busy themselves in the playground. But from time to time, they would look toward the train as it “chugs” around.

Okay, I thought I’ll just ask the “train station” staff if they could ride. There weren’t many people queuing anyway. It seemed like many of the invited guests weren’t all too excited about the train. Nope, no luck. I had to come back from 2nd December (today), spend $30 dollars in the mall, then pay another $10 to buy a festive pack which will include one ticket for one train ride, for one person.

But the kids kept looking earnestly at the Chuggington train.

Then, surprise, surprise… someone came up to me and offered me one train ticket. Yeah! Thank you very much! Er, uh, but I have two kids. How?! So took the two kids with me and approached the “train station” staff again. (The kids weren’t with me the first time.) I asked, I have only one ticket, but I have two kids, can you let them both share the ticket? Hmm, the request was escalated to a more senior staff. I think they looked at Vanessa’s and Ian’s eyes and their hearts melted. Yeah! They would let both kids board the train.

Haha, so the two kids gatecrashed the party and enjoyed the Chuggington train ride thoroughly.

If you’re interested in this Chuggington train ride, see the schedule and how-to-get instructions above. (Click for full-sized image to see fine print.)

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Looking back at our Hawaii trip in 2009, I could write a blog post for every day we spent there. I thought I would do the same for Japan, but in the end, I just did a single post… and that was long after we came back. It looks like it’s the same for Hong Kong. Each day we returned to the hotel, I was just too tired and only wanted to sleep. Okay, I spent some time looking through photos and clearing some email, but there was no creative juices left to think about what to write.

The vacation was, in actual fact, a rather leisurely one. We only did a couple of things. We went to Disneyland, we went to Ocean Park, we went to The Peak one of the nights, we shopped a little here and there… and it doesn’t seem like all these should have taken up 8 days. We had earlier been considering following a guided tour to Korea, and I’m glad we didn’t. I don’t think we could have kept pace with the tour group. No way we could have woken up and gotten the kids ready for the first meet-up each morning.

I remember some of the guided tours I went with my parents when I was little… they were too hectic. You just follow the programme, and I thought there was little time to enjoy yourselves. Your have to constantly watch the time. When you’re shepherding little kids around, you are not going to keep pace.

Sometimes I wonder are the kids going to remember their vacations. Vanessa might, this time, since after all she’s already four. Ian, perhaps not. But for the moment, they definitely enjoyed themselves. Like how, for example, Ian was overwhelmed with excitement at the aquarium in Ocean Park. I think he is totally nuts over fishes. Or how Vanessa was willing to put up with a very long queue under the hot sun to ride on the ferris wheel, again at Ocean Park.

The kids didn’t take too well to Universal Studios in Singapore. They were scared. Vanessa wasn’t too keen on Disneyland and Disney Sea in Japan last year either. Fortunately this year, the park tickets were much better utilized. Ian had become more brave this year, wanting to try many more rides than we had time for. Vanessa was more selective, still afraid of some rides, but certainly an improvement from the Disney parks in Japan. While in Japan last year, I had thought to myself that we could have saved ourselves a lot of money skipping the Disney parks and just confined ourselves to the Disney hotels.

We left Singapore on a very early Saturday morning, and returned back evening the next Saturday. The kids feel asleep on the taxi ride back from the airport. Family holidays are fun. But really, really, exhausting, and everything moves too slowly. I hope to get to the stage where holiday time could be ultra productive and we could get plenty of things done. Perhaps when they are at least 6 years old? Then they would already be schooling, and holidays would have to be during peak holiday seasons.

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It was the same with Vanessa too, back in March 2009. But I was a little apprehensive that it might be different for Ian. Vanessa had been very excited about starting school, even before she actually started going to school. We can see how excited she was. Ian is different. He seemed quite unexcited about the idea of attending school. It’s not that he didn’t want to go, or protested about it. He was simply indifferent.

Going to the child care centre would also be his first time attending any sort of class without either of us or our domestic helper accompanying him. Vanessa had attended classes where the child-minder does not accompany the child the entire time. All of Ian’s classes, so far, always had a child-minder accompanying throughout. So I thought Ian might be somewhat more anxious to be left alone in his class.

Of course, maybe the fact that his sister was in the same school might have been comforting enough. However, Vanessa’s classroom was on a different floor. He wouldn’t see her all through the day.

So, how was Ian’s first day in school?

Well, no fuss at all. He did not cry, and didn’t cause any trouble. Really nice. It seemed like he even fared slightly better than Vanessa did on her first day.

It’s a good thing that this is a short week for him, so it will be a gradual introduction to school. He was supposed to start on Monday, but fell sick, so stayed home on Monday and Tuesday. Thursday will be Children’s Day celebrations, and Friday is a holiday for the kids.

We’ll see how he does on the subsequent days.

Update: He was still good on Day Two.

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