To the baby of the family, who turns two

Dearest Baby J,

You arrived, just three days before Mama's birthday. You, looking tiny next to your older brothers. You, the one who learnt to sleep through the chaos of two little boys always poking you, or creating a ruckus around you. I cannot believe the baby of our family is now two, and you always remind me "I'm not a baby, I'm a toddler". But for now, I'm still calling you "baby", since you are still the baby of the family, at least for a little while more. And you'll always be the baby boy of the family. 

I've always marveled at how wonderfully you got along with your biggest brother. Both of you have a special bond, and he's always been extra patient and loving when it comes to you. These days, you still fight a fair bit with your second brother, but you are playing a lot more with him too. Hearing the conversations between the two of you always makes me smile!

You're probably the only extrovert in this family of introverts. You love being in the thick of things, and love hanging out with your brothers. Being the youngest, you know how to turn on the charm, and you're generally a smiley, sunshiny little boy, unless you're having one of those whiny days. 

You want to do everything that your brothers do. You try to climb like them, scoot like them, and even want to play the violin. So much so that your grandparents got you a tiny second-hand violin, so that you would stop bothering your brother when he practices his cello. 

The terrible twos have hit, and hard. The days have been filled with tantrums. You've started sneaking off to play with water in the bathroom, and insisting on soaking in the tub every other hour. You play hard, and fight hard. You've been pinching and scratching, and then you would try to get out of trouble by asking the victim "are you alright?". But tantrums aside, you have this sense of humour and love making us laugh with the funny things you say:

You: Where does Papa work?

Mama: He works in the hospital. 

You: No... He works in the watermelon, so I cannot eat up the watermelon!

~~~

You: Watermelon, watermelon, what do you see?

I see a J3 boy, want to eat me! 

~~~

You are just crazy about watermelon, and call yourself the watermelon boy. You also love pandas, and your brothers are always very excited when they spot a picture of a panda, and would point it out to you. They also help you to make a baby carrier out of your singlet for your baby panda, whom you call "Bamboo baby", so that the Mama panda can carry him. The thing is, you call the Mama panda "Bamboo boy", which makes me smile!

You are still a much better eater than your brothers, and love trying everything on our plates. You love chomping on fishballs, and you look a little like a fishball yourself. You go crazy when there's chocolate cake, jelly or seaweed snacks, and are always bugging me for "nack nack" (snacks). 

I feel a little sense of loss that my last little baby boy is growing up so fast. But we thank God for the little ray of sunshine that is you. Happy birthday, my little watermelon boy! 

Lil J's 4th

We had a simple celebration for Lil J turning four over the weekend. I must be getting older, or perhaps we were rather tired out this month. Whatever the case, I realize our parties are getting simpler and simpler these days, but I guess sometimes simpler is better!  I initially wanted the bare minimum for the party (food, friends and cake), since we had just come back from Legoland, and I've been exhausted these days. 

However, Junior J got all excited about preparing for the party. The in-laws were visiting, and were all ready to string up decorations (they've been so used to helping to put up streamers and blowing balloons for our parties!). In the end, we managed to pull together a simple party, and got to celebrate and had a great time chatting with friends. The kids more or less played nicely together, even though I didn't plan for games this round. So I guess we more or less fulfilled our main objective of a birthday party: to celebrate a special little boy turning one year older, and fill the home with the laughter and chatter of loved ones gathering for a celebration.

This round, we had a rainbow theme for the backdrop, with our usual streamer "wall" and balloons, and birthday bunting. However, we tried using tissue paper (from Daiso, which comes in a pack of 25 sheets of 5 different colours) for the streamers instead of crepe paper. This proved to be a lot easier and faster to put up, since you just need to cut the paper into strips and hang them up sheet by sheet, instead of streamer by streamer. The birthday bunting was from Cotton On Kids (I bought it when it was on offer), and I love how the black lettering stands out against the streamers!

Again, we had our usual chalkboard birthday greeting. Lil J wanted a dinosaur party, which surprised us as he isn't too keen on dinosaurs unlike his brother. But we went with his request, so I drew in dinosaurs, and we had dino cake toppers and party packs.

For the party packs, we did something similar to what we prepared for Junior J's 6th: Kraft paper bags from Daiso with backgrounds painted by Junior J, and Perler bead tags (again, assembled by Junior J).

We filled them with crayons, stickers (both from Daiso), and some munchies.

Junior J started freaking out before the party, because he realized that I had randomly matched the dinosaurs to the bags. According to him, there were only volcanoes and flowers in the Cretaceous, so those paper bags with volcanoes and flowers painted on them had to have Cretaceous dinosaurs matched to them. So he sat down and made more dinosaur tags hours before the party, so that everything would be accurate. Thankfully, we managed to shuffle the dinos around and he only needed to make one more!

Food-wise, we catered a popiah and kueh pie ti set from Old Long House Popiah.

We also bought curry puffs, fishballs and other finger food from Old Chang Kee, and the in-laws helped to make konnyaku jelly and cut fruit.

The cake was one of Lil J's fav. He doesn't get to eat much store-bought cake, since he still has an egg allergy. We recently discovered that Cedele sells an eggless truffle cake, which is pretty yummy, so we bought one for the party. We dressed up the cake using Perler bead dinosaurs. Junior J made a dimetrodon for Lil J, as he said it was one of his brother's favourite prehistoric creatures. We couldn't find a bead template for that, so he created his own design!

All in all, it was a simple, homey affair. But one filled with fun, laughter and lots of love. :) Happy Birthday, my not so little Lil J!

PS: You can read all our party posts here. 

Weekend Wanderings: Junior J's 6th

We celebrated Junior J's 6th birthday over the weekend, with a very small party with family, Junior J's godparents, and our church cell group mates. This round, we kept things really simple, as the in-laws were not around (FIL's still recovering back home) and the kids had just recovered from colds. There was just not enough time, so we skipped doing our customary crepe paper wall and also didn't plan any games. 

Junior J had requested for a prehistoric sea reptile theme. I was really stumped at what we could do for his theme, so he helped me to draw and paint a mosasaur and liopleurodon. We just stuck these up as decorations!

We had helium balloons again this time, and just chose a bunch of bright colours and pumped them up ourselves. Apatosaurus helped to hold them down until everyone collected theirs. 

And we had the usual blackboard wall greeting, with some sea reptiles and marine creatures to go with the theme!

I'll save the food and party packs for another post. All in all, we had a lovely time just catching up with friends, and the kids happily played together. 

Junior J was really excited about his party this time round, and was actually counting down to the day of the party! He helped alot with party preparations, and was a great host, giving out plates and helping out. I'm starting to think six is a nice age... but I still cannot believe this boy is now six! 

Thankful Tuesday: No more babies in the house

Dearest Baby J,

Oh my! Officially today we have no more babies in the house, because now you're technically known as a toddler. How time has sped by so quickly!

You are a little bundle of sunshine in our home. Always ready to smile, always wanting attention, always loving company. You love to give kisses. You try to play with your brothers, but know when to pass over their toys and beat a hasty retreat if they yell. You're fascinated with the cuckoo clock and would exclaim "bug bug!" (bird) when the clock strikes the hour. You can roar on demand when we ask you what does a tiger sound like. You are busily adding words to your vocabulary: bear, blackberry (back bear), apple (ahhh per). Your gramps are so thrilled because you are so enthusiastic about your byebyes, by the way you wave and say "byyyyyyyy!". 

You like to flip through books, and especially love looking at animal pictures. You're also a climber, who always gives us heart attacks. I still cannot believe that you are no longer a baby anymore... and I think we'll still be referring to you as baby for awhile more. We thank God so so much for you!

Happy Birthday, my lil munchkin. Stay sunshiney bright!

Love,
Mama and Papa


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Lil J's 3rd: The party decor

I admit, I always go a little berserk when it comes to party decor. I love dressing up the home for a party! Even the in-laws know that, and gamely chipped in to help the night before. My FIL even asked me about the theme, since we usually have a theme for each party. 

This round, we were going for a construction themed party, but I opted to choose Lil J's favourite colours of green, yellow and blue. ("GEEEN! My favourite!" he always says.) I initially wanted to do large tissue pompoms, but baby J was sick during the days just before the party, so I didn't have time to make those. However, we managed to do up the usual crepe streamer backdrop, which has become a permanent feature at each party (you can see some of our other backdrops here and here). I love this, because crepe paper is so cheap, plus we get a burst of colours in the backdrop for group pictures. As usual, we looped the streamers on yarn, which we stuck up using masking tape. And we dressed it up further with balloons (my MIL and FIL helped me to pump these up with our bicycle pump), as well as a bunting which Junior J and I made using regular vanguard sheets plus poster paint (vanguard seriously is cheap but good!). One great find this year were the big balloons from Daiso: these go up to 28 cm across, have a nice sheen, and are really cheap (you get more than 10 per bag!). 

Usually our party decor doesn't cost more than $10, and sometimes we don't even spend $5! (I can't really justify spending a lot on decor, since most of it gets tossed out.) However, this year I did splurge a little more on two things: flowers, which I bought from a florist the night before and arranged in two mason jars, as well as helium-filled balloons. Spotlight was having a sale on disposable helium tanks, so we bought one, as we figured the gas should last us for a few parties and would be cheaper than buying ready-filled balloons. So we filled up a bunch of balloons with helium and used the kids' vehicles to hold them down, and each kid got to bring home a balloon. 

Oh, and of course I couldn't resist drawing on our chalkboard wall! Lil J was ecstatic on his birthday, when he woke up to find a birthday message on the wall, with all his favourite vehicles, and his face looking out of all of them!

      

Chalk: Dinosaurs

This week, we've been trying to get our stalled engines running again with regards to homeschool. The boys have recovered from the flu, and we've started reading and writing again. Junior J wasn't too keen on learning much, so I just asked if he wanted to draw dinosaurs on the blackboard, and of course he said yes. 

I love the way he draws them. They mainly resemble stick-figure versions of dinosaurs, but he manages to incorporate all the key distinguishing features of each species, from plates, spikes, horns to the number of claws they have. 

This dino-mania has taught me something: it really makes it much easier to teach when you let a child learn according to his interests. He flips non-fiction books on dinosaurs, sprouts all sorts of random facts (he knows what a World War is, because that was when the Spinosaurus fossils were destroyed in Berlin), and plays with his dinosaurs every day. He tries to teach his younger brother about them, and Lil J has also learnt the names of all their dinosaur toys. The baby is just content to attack and chew on Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus. 

Amongst all the dinosaurs books that we've read, I've found two to be particularly comprehensive (in terms of being reference books that is): Scholastic Dinosaurs A to Z, as well as Dougal Dixon's Amazing Dinosaurs (affiliate links attached). The former has all the dinosaurs sorted out in alphabetical order, which really helps when you need to read up about a certain dinosaur of interest. I find most books tend to present dinosaurs in random categories, which can get confusing. The latter is available in the library. Both are not available on most online bookstores, so we purchased second-hand copies from Amazon. 

With our engines running slowly now, I'm hoping we'll be able to go full-steam ahead next week. Have a blessed weekend!

Chalk: The Human Body

This week Junior J wanted our blackboard topic to be about the human body. So we got the hubs to stand at the wall and outlined him so that our model would be "life-sized". And then we added various organs in. I helped Junior J with drawing some of the organs, and he tried drawing some with reference to diagrams in biology texts. He did all the labelling (of course I helped with the spelling bit), and even added the little section on how food gets digested and gets smaller and smaller as it moves along the gut.

I'm quite surprised at how much he's learnt so far about this topic. He mainly gets his information from a Magic School Bus book on the topic, as well as from watching the Magic School Bus shows (which I highly recommend for learning science). We also read "Inside Your Outside", and I realize he probably picked up some of his information from our casual everyday conversations. 

He's been quite fascinated about the topic, so most of what was on the board was stuff he already knew (you can see his drawing of Lil J's digestive system here). However, he learnt a few new terms in the process of doing up the board: alveoli (he referred to them as air sacs previously), as well as faeces (I remember my students used to misspell this all the time as "faces"!). 

These days, working on the blackboard has become a family affair, where baby is watching in his chair, while Lil J sometimes helps. This round, he added the "poop" (and had a field day drawing it as you can see!). 

PS: This is the third topic we've done up on the blackboard, and we'll be updating the board with a new topic almost every week. You can see all our blackboard drawings here.