Teamwork

Matthew went for a project meeting at a friends' place yesterday. They had planned it for 9am-6pm and he duly reached home at 7pm. I asked him what the project was, and he told me they baked butter cookies as practice for a Food & Nutrition (i.e. home econs) test, and also composed a song for Music class (or was it Lit, whatever). I thought it was pretty cool. Then it struck me - 9 hrs to do that? I'm no baker but I'm pretty sure it doesn't take more than an hour to make a batch of biscuits. Turns out he didn't previously mention that they had also scheduled in LOTS of time to play halo, minecraft, skylanders!

"In My Heart"

Rachel developed Kawasaki Disease a few months back, and that means having to have heart scans to make sure that there's no aneurysm of the coronary blood vessels. Apparently that happens, but luckily hers have been just within the acceptable range so far.

At her last scan, the screen was visible to her and she was looking intently at the black and white fuzzy images while the technician was moving the handpiece over her chest.

We were all watching when she suddenly asked, "Where's Jesus?"

Nobody knew what she was talking about.

Slowly, it dawned on me that she was looking for Jesus because we have always been telling her that Jesus is in her heart, and prior to the scan, I had explained to her that the ultrasound is to see inside her heart and check that everything is alright!

Bless the little one.

We did see a pulsating image that looked like a figure jumping up and down, so I told her that was him and she was very tickled. I'm convinced it was, too.

Frozen Demand

Now that it's all the rage, Disney's Frozen merchandising has hit a huge supply shortfall and demand has consequently shot through the roof. A check on Amazon shows little girl Elsa costume dresses selling for a thousand US dollars apiece.

I remark to Sophie, "If it's going to cost so much, you might as well take the little girl to a tailor and have a dress custom made for her and it will fit perfectly and be of vastly superior quality. And it won't even cost a thousand dollars."

Sophie replies, "I know, right? Only problem is, I don't know any tailors."

Not F-A-N?

Our nearly 5-year-old Rachel is now learning to put letters together to form words in school, and is coming along quite nicely. S asked her casually, "So how do you spell 'fan'?"

Rachel goes, "Don't ask me! You must think for yourself!"

Andrew!

Poor boy. He is nearly a year old already and I have not yet written about his birth! Suffice to say, epidural rocks! Oh, and he was born on Wednesday 22 May 2013 at about 4 something am. (IIRC)

The day before that, I had taken leave for Rachel's dressing change under general anaesthesia, which was happening about once a week as this was shortly after her major operation to remove the bulk of her plexiform tumour. More about that another time. Well, I had been feeling mild contractions since that morning, that were slowly getting more regular as the day progressed, while I was at KKH with Rachel.

We finally went to the birthing hospital (Thomson Medical Centre) that night at about 11pm. After around an hour or so, I decided to take the plunge to give epidural a try. I asked for Dr Yvonne Lim, who was in NCC with me back in secondary school. She came quite promptly, and very quickly set up the epidural what-not and I was soon lying back in extreme comfort compared to the labours of the previous four kids.

A Dr Benjamin Tham delivered Andrew naturally when the time came, since my doctor Paul Tseng was away. After Andrew's head popped out, I had to push again to get his shoulders through. He weighed 3.46kg, about 300g heavier than expected. For some reason they all turn out larger then estimated. Dr Tham was going to discharge me that same day since I was all fine, no stitches needed, but I stayed two nights anyway, to just chill and get in as much pampering and sleep as I could before we got home and the fun began. And that was that!

di-di

Trying to encourage Rachel in Mandarin, I said to her, "Matthew is your ge-ge, Sarah and Sophie are your jie-jie, and Andrew is your di-di."

Sophie immediately corrected me, saying, "Andrew is not a di-di, he is a bao-bao!"