The Bub in the Belly

It's Friday and the weekend is almost here! I still remember last weekend - it was a series of meals strung together by Ryan's classes. It started on Friday evening, when we met up with some of Richard's colleagues and ex-colleagues for a steamboat dinner at 7th Storey Restaurant at Wilkie Edge. We thought that we might have to leave a little earlier but Ryan was really well-behaved and towards the end, he just fell asleep in my arms, so we managed to last till the end, when everyone parted ways.

The next day before Ryan's Playclub, we met up with Kenny, Belinda and their son, Matthias, for lunch at Lao Beijing in Tiong Bahru Plaza. We ordered the set lunch from the tasting menu. It was for four but the portions were so generous that we had to ask for two of the courses to be doggy-bagged. Great value for money, haha! Dinner was Chinese fare at Taste Paradise in Ion Orchard. Ryan polished off a bowl of fried rice, so I think it's safe to say that he approved of the food there.

On Sunday after Ryan's swimming class, we had brunch at Beach Road Prawn Noodle at East Coast Road. I had the prawn noodle and Richard (and Ryan) had the pork rib noodle plus we ordered some ngoh hiang and other fried stuff. Yum. After Shichida class, dinner was a simple affair at Crystal Jade Kitchen at Great World City. Again, we met up with Kenny, Belinda and their son, Matthias and again, we ordered the set menu for four. This time, the portions were just nice.

Lately on weekends, we have adopted a new practice - we have been loitering! Late at night, after the shops have closed, the three of us will loiter along Orchard Road. There is no target destination or aim, we simply meander along, stroll up and down, enjoying the cool night air. It started when late one night, Ryan was still full of energy and so we decided to let him burn it off - we took him out to Borders (Borders closes at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays) and after Borders closed, we let him walk up and down the street until he was ready to go home.

It's almost like going to a park. The area is quite brightly lit. The pedestrian streets are wide and spacious and there are lots of plants and trees (not as many as in a park of course). There were also quite a lot of people milling about, some loitering like us and others on their way somewhere. I like it. In the day, people are rushing from one mall to the next and Orchard Road is all business. At night, the people are different, they don't have things to do, places to be, they just want to chill and relax. Somehow, it's more personal.

Here's a video of Ryan outside Far East Shopping Centre (next to Borders), burning off his calories by going up and down the stairs, and up and down the stairs, and up and down the stairs (he claps his hands after each rotation). We have to accompany him on his stair climbing (we take turns) and it was not funny because he did it more than 20 times!

More calorie-busting activity for the boys!


Here are some photos taken on a different night. This time we were loitering outside Ion Orchard after it had closed.


More stairs!

There was a large crowd gathered on the steps outside Ion Orchard, they were listening to two Filipino buskers - the lady was singing and the man was playing the keyboard. Some people even got up to dance. It was so wonderful - it didn't matter whether a businessman sat next to a domestic helper, whether an old retiree was dancing with a young teenager or whether a Filipino and the Chinese man next to her were humming the same lyrics. When everyone came together just to listen to the music, there was, for that brief space in time, no differences, no pretenses, no prejudices, just a real sense of community. Just wonderful.

Last Saturday, Ryan had his usual Playclub session at Evans Road. The lesson was about the colour green and we were all asked to come in green outfits. Quite a number of parents and children did turn up in green, which was fantastic. If my son sees 15 parents and 15 children in the same colour, it makes a powerful image and when he is told that the colour is green, he gets a deeper impression. However, if 15 parents and 15 children are in different colours and Ryan is told that one of them is in green, he is probably not going to remember anything after that one person in green leaves his line of sight. Same principle applies to singing songs, doing the song actions, saying good morning/good afternoon, sitting down for storytime/magic box/snack time, acting out the appropriate expressions/feelings during dramatime, etc.

I believe that each and every parent in the classroom is also a teacher because there is always a chance that, at anytime, a child is looking at him/her and absorbing what he/she is doing. Perhaps because most of the time the parent is sitting or standing behind his/her own child, the parent may think that his/her child is not going to notice him/her so they don't bother to go through the motions. I prefer to analyse it this way - if Ryan is looking at some other parent across the room who is saying "Good afternoon" or a parent who is helping to act out the story during dramatime, then he is learning from that parent and I would return the gesture for his/her child. When you get an involved set of parents who understand that parent participation is not just for their own child's benefit but for the class as a whole, then it becomes a great learning environment. That's the power of a parent-accompanied class like Playclub.

Anyway, back to last week's class. For arts and crafts, Ryan surprised me because he showed a lot of enthusiasm for the painting activity. The activity was to make a turtle - paint the turtle shell green, stick on some green crepe paper squares, stick on legs and eyes and sprinkle some glitter on top. Normally Ryan hates to get paint on his fingers and just skips ahead to the sticking and the sprinkling. This time he was really gungho and paint was going everywhere. He took two paintbrushes, one in each hand, and he was painting everything that he could reach - the turtle shell (actually a folded paper plate), the newspaper lining the table, even the turtle of the child next to him! After there was nothing left on the table to paint, he tried to leave the table together with his paintbrushes to find something else to paint. I had to give him a second turtle to paint to keep him (and his paintbrushes) at the table.

For outdoor play, Ryan's class was supposed to go on the playground slides and little cars. Ryan went out ahead of me, while I tidied up our bags. When I got outside, the other class was still having their outdoor play and for them, it was waterplay. I thought to myself, "Ryan will be there" and sure enough, he was! He had crammed himself in among the other children and he was right up against the water trough, splashing the water around, playing with the water toys! Hahaha! Nobody seemed to notice, or perhaps nobody minded, so I let him be.

Ryan gatecrashing another class for the waterplay

Right at home

They soon started to pack up and all the children left to go back to their classroom. Ryan was, as always, reluctant to leave, but he had no choice as the teachers started pouring away the water and covering up the troughs. Still, he was happy that he had managed to steal a few minutes of waterplay and he was grinning from ear to ear as he ran off to the playground to join his actual classmates.

By the way, Julia Gabriel's holiday programme for November/December 2010 is now open for sign-ups, so if you're interested, go for it!

Two weekends ago, we met up with some friends (Kenny, Belinda, Matthias and Chris, Alicia and Brayden) at E!Hub at Downtown East for some fun at eXplorer kid's indoor children's playground followed by lunch. Ryan was especially interested in the ball pits and the Mega Play at the indoor playground. The Mega Play is a large 3-level obstacle course - Ryan slid down the tubes, climbed up the nets and crawled through the tunnels and Richard and I took turns to slide, climb and crawl along with him. It was quite tiring for the adults because we had to crouch down and kneel/squat to fit in the spaces, but it was fun. Here are some iphone photos of Richard and Ryan in the ball pit with the changing lights. I didn't manage to take photos while we were in the Mega Play, it's tough enough keeping up with the children in there!

Ryan is doing really well with his swimming lessons. He has been taking weekly half-hourly lessons with Aquaducks since January this year and he enjoys every session. He's always happy to be in the water, always confident, always eager.

Here he is swimming in the pool (last Sunday).

An interesting thing happened the other day after class. The pool is at Dempsey Hill, in the same compound as St. James Church Kindergarten and the kindergarten has a generous outdoor compound where there is a rabbit run (and some fish tanks). After Ryan's swimming class, we usually stop by and watch the rabbits for a while.

Two Sundays ago, we were watching the rabbits when we noticed some kits (baby rabbits) with their eyes still closed, crawling about on the ground. A rabbit must have just given birth. It was fascinating to watch the kits (although they really weren't doing much). We couldn't tell which rabbit was the mother - all the adult rabbits in the area weren't being at all motherly. One was cleaning itself and the others were just lying about.

We were about to leave when I noticed that there was a little kit which was still in a small hole in the ground at one corner of the rabbit run. I suppose the mother rabbit had transported the other kits to safety but forgot the last one. What worried me was that the little fella was attracting large red ants and the ants were all over it. The poor thing was writhing around in the hole. The kindergarten office was closed so we couldn't alert them or get them to unlock the gate. I was so angry that the kindergarten staff had not ensured that there would be someone around when the pregnant doe gave birth.

I couldn't very well leave the kit like that - the red ants would have devoured it - so I told Richard that I would climb over the fence into the compound. We looked around and tried to figure out how to get in. The rabbit run didn't seem to have an entry/exit, so even if I got into the kindergarten compound, I wasn't sure how to get into the rabbit run and if I climbed into the rabbit run, I wasn't sure if I could climb out. Church service had just ended and people were coming out from the nearby building. I didn't want to be stuck in the run with people thinking I'm stealing the rabbits and calling the cops on me. It had to be a quick job.

After about five minutes of scrutinising the perimeter, by which time more and more red ants had advanced onto the poor kit, Richard took matters into his own hands. He heaved himself over the fence into the compound and then he heaved himself over the fence into the rabbit run. He dusted off the red ants from the kit, picked it up and brought it over to join the other kits under safe cover. The adult rabbit which had been cleaning itself, stopped and gave Richard a hard look - I suppose that must have been the mother doe. Richard then checked the rest of the run for any more stray kits and after ensuring all was well, he climbed back out over the two fences. Two minutes flat.

My hero.

Actually, I should say The Rabbit Hero.

The next Sunday, we walked past the rabbit run as usual but the kits were all gone. Hopefully, the kindergarten staff have put them in a safe place and they are being well cared for.

Once in a while, I have to work on a weekend or I have to attend a corporate function after work on a weekday. On these occasions, Richard has to take care of Ryan by himself, which he does very well.

Last Thursday after work, I attended the SSA 25th anniversary gala dinner at the Marina Bay Sands. Despite there being nearly 200 tables and nearly 2000 guests, the food and the service were good and I had a good time. The dinner ended at nearly 11 pm and I wondered how Richard was getting along at home with Ryan.

When I got home, I found this on our living room wall.

Last Sunday, we visited the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.  We went there in the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest but that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves.  Ryan got to touch and smell lots of plants and herbs, flowers and fruits and explore the many play structures there, including a suspension bridge, a treehouse and his favourite - a water play area.

Richard had a birthday last week. We had planned the usual - a quiet dinner with just the three of us - but  I decided to surprise him with a dinner with some friends.

Fortunately, he was running late from a meeting so the rest of us managed to gather at the restaurant before his arrival. Except for one of our friends who, as luck would have it, crossed paths with Richard just outside the restaurant! Chris is a terrible liar, so when Richard asked, "What are you doing here?", her "Err..." gave it all away! He walked into the restaurant smiling from ear to ear, fully expecting to see everyone there. Hahaha! Oh well, we had a good time and a good dinner, so it was a good evening.

Happy Birthday Richard!

Happy Birthday Richard! We love you!

Hello October!

When October rolls around, I can feel the end of the year coming. At work, there are performance evaluations to do, bonuses to decide, next year's budgets to put together, marketing plans to consolidate, leave to clear, all the little signals that we've done what we can for this year. At the same time, there are more thoughts of family activities and year-end holidays. I can almost smell Christmas, the wait for it begins now!

Having said that, there's still a lot of stuff to be done before Christmas. The main thing we are busy with right now is getting our new place ready. Well, I shouldn't say that we're "busy" because we haven't actually done much and the place is still empty. I'll just say that it's top priority? Er... perhaps I should just say that we're working on it. At the rate we're moving (a couple of hours of conversation every two days), it's almost like a hobby rather than a life-changing shake-up.

Anyhooo....

I do have some updates from last week (including an update on how we celebrated Richard's birthday) but let me put the photos together first. For today, I want to let you know about an event that is happening on 31 October 2010. Yes, it's Halloween, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's a mini-carnival at Hort Park from 9 am till noon - there will be mascots, balloon sculptors, face painting, magic shows, a truckload of balloons and tons of more cool stuff.  The event, called "HAPPEE DAY", is organised by Daphne of Mother, Inc. with the Children's Cancer Foundation and it's essentially a morning out with 30 children suffering from childhood cancer.

As Daphne put it, "I know the carnival is just one day of fun for these kids who have to be brave and go through years of jabs and treatment. Thing is, we can’t be there through it all, but one day is a start. To let them know that they’re not facing this alone. That there are people who care and are proud of them for fighting and are cheering them on. It’s a day we get to meet them and spend a morning together."

So, if you are free on the morning of 31 October 2010 (which is a Sunday), do consider dropping by. Bring some friends, bring your children and have some fun. Hop on over to Mother, Inc. to find out more.