Dance, dance, wherever you may be

I danced as a child. For many years. And then I stopped. Abruptly. 

Today, I met a dear friend with whom I danced in school. She still dances today and asked if I would join her.

I love dance. Everything about it. From the music and movement, to the shoes and leotards, to the stage and rehersals. I love everything there is to love about dance. I spent many years doing ballet, but the truth is all types of dance fascinate me. Dance with rhythm and definite movement, not the strange awkward pieces that pass off as art these days. I admire the discipline, the focus on perfection, the form, whether individual or group. I miss all this – I have missed it for years now.

And today, pondering a return to ballet, I wonder if I will ever dance again. I dance to be on stage. That is really what I love about dance – the performance. I know I can never perform again – I’m soon to be on the wrong side of thirty. But there is still the strong draw to recapture the moments of my youth. The excitement, the dedication, the end result.

I come back to this every few years, desperate to find that little piece of my past that I so loved. It’s never the same and it never will be. And yet, I still come back to it.

So will I dance again? Maybe I will. Even if it’s to recapture something long gone, it is mine to keep, mine to treasure. It will be fun, silly and hopefully will help me get back into shape.

Dance again, my sweet. Time is short. There is little to ponder.

Blogging is so….

Yesterday.

Indeed. 2009 hasn’t been a good year for posts. Ideas are few, motivation to write lacking. Micro-blogging seems to have taken over, in the form of status updates on Facebook and 140-character lines on Twitter. Perhaps that is the reality – my ability to construct a coherent piece of prose has gone down the drain.

Still, I’m not ready to shut this blog down. I believe there will be a day when I will seek sizeable airing space again.

A new era

A new home, a new neighbourhood, a new computer. While I’m not attached to new homes and neighbourhoods, having moved now a grand total of seven times in the past nine years, I am attached to my computer, to whom I’ve stayed faithful over the past eight years. Hopefully, the decision to move to a Mac will not be regretted.

Elsewhere in our home, the following was overheard this past weekend:

We are at VivoCity. Grandma makes comment to Papa about “those silly cars” (pointing to the Sentosa cable cars which they recently sat on) and how expensive rides on them are. N, who doesn’t appear to be listening, suddenly pipes up seriously,

“That not silly car. That called cable car.”

Right you are, my son, right you are.

These past few weeks

I’ve been pre-occupied these past few weeks with a few things.

(1) Credit Card Crazy: I suppose it must be the recession, but suddenly I’m acutely aware of all the great discounts and deals arising from certain credit cards. I’ve always been a one-card gal. You know, the type that only uses the credit card when she absolutely has to. Which is typically hardly ever. I’m mostly into NETS, or direct debit. But what with the recession and feeling the bite especially when it comes to fancy eating, I’ve discovered a whole new world of card-dependent discounts. All of a sudden, I’ve acquired two new cards, with another two on the way. This more or less covers us for the bigger promotions out there. Now the key is to remember to cancel when they present us with the annual fee….

(2) UNIQLO: I’m actually excited about this. I, the one who does not shop, actually cares that a new shop is coming to town. I suppose it’s the fact that a large proportion of S’s cute baby clothes came from the UNIQLO outlet below my beloved Akachan Honpo in Tokyo. I don’t recall getting anything substantial for myself, however, and am disappointed to see that they don’t have the kids’ range in at first go, but perhaps over time they’ll bring in the kids stuff. I won’t dress myself in trendy clothes, but I love it when the kids look sharp.

(3) Birthdays: S and N, to be exact. One past, the other coming up. I’m not terribly excited about birthdays, but I do have to do the expected. Gifts, party, goodie bags. You know, the works. Suffice it to say that I managed to pull a party off a piece which garnered enough happy faces. It’s a little sad that I treat my children’s birthdays as a chore, but honestly, it is. The fact is birthdays are a small deal in my family, so having to make a big deal out of something that’s mostly treated like an interesting fact in my family, is a little weird. But as I say, we are strange that way. Kids LOVE birthdays and it wouldn’t be right to deprive them of a proper celebration.

(4) Move: No, we’re not upping and going again. Not yet, at least. No, we’re just moving house, but staying country. This time, I have a lot of help, no language barrier, no air tickets, visas, foreign currency and hotels to deal with, so this move is easy-peasy. In theory. Of course, we are now one baby more, so it does make things a little less predictable. More on the move after we move.

(5) Baby: M is turning into a little screaming monster. I need to train him, but that’s not happening, what with all this mad running about I do all day. I need to be home to train him, and that’s only ever going to happen once we move. So in theory, I allow him to be this screaming brat for a little while longer till I can take him to task.

It’s tax season once more and that’s really what I should be doing right now, rather than blogging….

Butt off

N was playing around while we were finishing up a meal the other day at a restaurant. Chopstick in hand, wrapped tightly in his little hanky, he told me it was a rocket.

“10 – 9 – 4 – 5 – 3 – 2 – 1 ….  BUTT OFF!!!!”

Five, three and zero-point-something

This week, I caught myself looking at the children and thinking “goodness, where has the time gone”, so many times. The children are growing and growing fast. M is already been with us for quite a few months, and still I refer to him as the newborn.

At this time, S remains our biggest challenge. She is a bubbly child, exuberant by nature. She is sunny and adventurous, always willing to give a new thing (or a new food) a try. She laughs at everything and talks a whole lot. Dammit, she can carry on an entire conversation without anyone else having to contribute. She is curious and always needs to know why or who or what or where. Regardless of whether it actually means anything to her. She loves to joke and thinks she’s incredibly funny. Sometimes the sheer fact she thinks she’s funny makes her quite funny, if you get my drfit.

As delightful as she is when she is agreeable, she has, in the past six months, learnt to be disagreeable. She is annoying, willfully ignoring what she’s been told to do (like greet people she meets or saying goodbye or thank you), rolling eyeballs, giving rude responses, refusing to apologize (that’s not really new – she’s always had a problem with apologies), being excessively nasty towards N (including physical abuse like pinching and hitting), the list goes on.

I’ve never had to think much about how to respond to poor behaviour because I’ve largely never had to put up with it. But in the past six months, we’ve found ourselves scrambling. I’m reading books, reading mommy blogs, asking people advice. I’m trying to figure out what works best to teach S some manners and proper behaviour. Because she is stubborn and defiant, just telling her to do it will never work. Nagging certainly has no effect (does it ever?). Credible threats should work, but they don’t always. Sometimes they backfire. I think that’s largely my own mistake in being inconsistent – sometimes I act on my threats, sometimes I don’t. Not good. Time outs have worked a little, but again, not all the time since I don’t consistently adminster it.  I guess it’s pretty obvious the lesson here for me is consistency.

N, who turns three soon, has become a delight. Since he’s learnt to communicate better, he no longer has tantrums and has become much more predictable. His eczema continues to bug us all, but for now, I feel I have a handle on it. We continue to rely on steroid creams and antihisthamines, but we’re now attempting Chinese medication which he is agreeable to. He has good days and bad ones, but overall, we are managing his condition much better.

N is mischievious, chatty (in his own incomprehensible way), and as exuberant as his sister. He is headstrong and takes to ignoring when told what to do, which annoys everyone, but since he is quite loveable, he gets forgiven for it. Not a good plan for the future, but it is hard when we have this many adults in the household, to implement some proper way of responding to his bad behaviour. He is playful and loud and adores the very ground his sister walks on. Still, he has learnt to whine pitifully when his sister threatens or snatches things from him (and even when his sister does nothing more than parrot him annoyingly). If he’s in a good mood, he doesn’t even notice her pinches or kicks. He’s a tough fellow with incredible focus. We noticed today his determination to achieve perfection (whatever that may mean to a three-year-old) by his desire to only play on two things at the playground. He wanted to be able to do them JUST RIGHT. He loves to draw and has a gazillion things to say about his art work. He is an orderly child, only when it isn’t required of him. Just try asking him to put his toys away and he’ll leave them all strewn around the room (or he’ll just insist his sister can pick them up, which she does!!). In a nutshell, he’s another stubborn nut.

M, the “newborn”, is a total and utter delight. He coos and gurgles like a charming little baby. And then he screams his head off like an insane banshee if I’m not around to nurse him (he will drink from the bottle – he just needs his quiet nursing time, which he doesn’t always get since I run around so much). In general, he’s the easiest of the lot right now. Just put him to the boob. He loves it. Today D and I were wondering what he’ll turn out to be like. Sunny and funny like his sister, who has no persistence whatsoever built into her, or his brother who will doggedly do something till he gets it right.

I realized a few days ago that S is in my face so much that she gets the bulk of my attention. M gets a lot of my time (not necessarily attention) just because of the nursing. And poor N gets very little of me. Just because he’s happy to be with any of the adults in the house, not just I. Quite unlike S who has always been very attached to me. So as a resolution (and my continuing effort to better myself as a parent), I plan to institute S-only-time and N-only-time. So that I get to know my children one-on-one and learn what makes them tick.

And they say I stay home and twiddle my thumbs all day. I say parenting is hard work. I’m just lucky enough to do it full-time.

Sportsfans

Watching a bit of indoor soccer.

Contemplating

S at the swim meet this past weekend.

Afternoons

I’m of the opinion that my children are learning enough playing on their own most afternoons. They indulge in imaginative play, their double-decker bed serving everything from a ship to South Africa, to a bear cave, to a rocket. Sure, they turn the room upside down nearly everday, but they’re happy in their world and I’m happy to be left alone with M.

But apparently, this is not good for them. They should be in phonics classes, or extra Mandarin classes, or in ballet, or soccer, or gymnastics, or art classes. There’s loads of literature out there talking about the dangers of over-scheduling our children and the importance of play, and yet when I choose to allow them to play, I get all sorts of flak suggesting that they should be in one class or another rather than playing.

So I’ve now decided that instead of sending them to class, I will attempt to educate them a little on my own, outside the regular curriculum at school. I’m not sure if this will give them any headstart over their peers (frankly, I think the best I can hope to achieve is to bring them on par with their peers who are probably already way ahead of classwork), but at least it gives me a good grasp of what they do know. It will also instill in them the habit of doing a bit of work everyday before play. And it will save me the effort (and money) involved in sending them to extra classes.

As for the extra classes that involve activities like dance or sport or art, I’ve decided that my children can’t do everything. I work on the idea that I will try to expose them to as much as is feasibly possible, but there are priorities and those will be fulfilled first before any others. So if S never gets to dance or N never gets to formally learn soccer, tough. 

My ultimate goal with the children is to allow them a chance to have fun. There will be time enough for endless tuition once they get into primary school. Really, is it necessary to start now?

She would know, wouldn’t she?

Today, we were pleasantly surprised coming out of church in the evening. Up in the sky was a beautiful rainbow, perfectly formed, a colourful arch all the way across the sky in an impeccable semi-circle.

S and N gawk in awe for just about a minute, and then launch into the two-thousand-and-thirty-eight questions about rainbows. Then, suddenly, S sniffs disdainfully.

“But Mommy, it’s not a REAL rainbow. I mean, look, it’s only got three colours.”