card designs 2011

Card designs for 2011. The theme is various unique birthday celebration customs around the world.

Chinese New Year - the Year of the Rabbit. A feisty little rabbit this one is. Or is meant to be. Some say it looks fierce.

In Argentina, the birthday child receives a pull on the earlobe for each year of his/her age.

In Canada, the birthday child is ambushed and his/her nose is greased with butter or margarine for good luck, the idea being that having a greased nose makes it too slippery for bad luck to stick.

In Denmark, the birthday gifts are placed around the child's bed when he/she is asleep, so the child will wake up surrounded by presents. And there’s no way that you can keep your birthday a secret. Every household in Denmark places a flag outside their home whenever they have any family member’s birthday.

In Germany, if a man reaches the age of 30 and does not have a girlfriend, the birthday tradition is to have him sweep the stairs of City Hall. Friends are invited to throw rubble on the stairs and when he’s finished, they'll throw more rubble. This is to show every girl that this man can clean a house very well.

In Ireland, it is customary to hold the child upside down and "bump" the child on the floor for every year of his/her life, plus one extra "bump" for good luck.

The Vietnamese do not acknowledge the exact day they were born. Instead everyone celebrates becoming a year older on New Year's Day. Adults congratulate children by presenting them with red envelopes containing lucky money.

Christmas.

practice exercise

When Michelle brought Shee Yun to Naam Kheung Primary School yesterday for the Primary 1 orientation, she asked Shee Yun to practice walking from the school gate to her classroom, just to make sure she remembers her way. When Shee Yun did it, she had one hand holding a fist behind her, pretending to be dragging her school bag. Her school bag is the type with wheels and a handle which can be used to drag it. At one point when Shee Yun approached stairs, she avoided them, and instead took the ramp. Naturally when you are dragging a school bag along you need to use the ramp. She certainly took the simulation very seriously.

11 Dec 2011. We visited i-City again. There's a Ferris wheel in the background, but it is not in operation yet. We got there before it was dark.

The double-decker merry-go-round, which is new. It wasn't there the last time we visited. The children took a ride but we didn't join. Chee Ying's mum Ai Shiang and Chee Ying took a ride together with them.

Chen Rui is often 马后炮. When we tell her something, she often replies that she already knows, or she has already seen it. I'm not sure whether it is always true, but this happens so frequently that I suspect at least sometimes she is being 马后炮. One surprising thing about her is although she is always cheeky and playful at home, and has lots to say, she seems to be rather timid and soft-spoken outside. Now that the children are having BM tuition at home, I often hear her being very soft-spoken to Cikgu Rokiah. Actually even when using FaceTime with Ma, she speaks softly.

orientation day

Today Michelle brought Shee Yun to orientation day at Naam Kheung Primary School. It turned out that one of Shee Yun's classmates from kindergarten is also her classmate at primary school. So at least there is a familiar face, but not that I need Shee Yun needs that. Shee Yun likes her school and looks forward to starting school. The only thing she doesn't like is the toilet, which she finds smelly. I think all school toilets are like that. The toilets are squat toilets too, which Shee Yun almost never uses, but she seems to have no problem using them.

17 Dec 2011. Shee Yun at Fraser's Hill. Photo taken by Chen Rui I think.

16 Dec 2011. Flowers at Fraser's Hill.

18 Dec 2011. Chen Rui and I with the small clock tower at Fraser's Hill. Photo taken by Shee Yun.

When Michelle took this photo, both the girls struck poses. They look like doing some taichi sword movement. 华山论剑。

It's Michelle and my 10th anniversary today. It's 20 years if counting when we first met.

17 Dec 2011. Lunch at Fraser's Hill.

the other front tooth

Shee Yun lost her other front tooth today. It has been loose for quite some time, and in the past few days she was able to wiggle it by big angles. It came out this morning when she was about to have her morning bottle of milk. As usual, I washed it and put it away in a small plastic ziplock bag, with a note stating the position of the tooth and the date. I don't know what I will do with these teeth I have been collecting.

Shee Yun came to me today and told me that it was convenient to have a gap in her teeth. Then she showed me how she put a straw through the gap while she drank 100PLUS. I can see her new tooth already growing from inside the hole in her gums. It will be fully grown soon.

16 Dec 2011. Photo taken at Fraser's Hill.

Ballet stance.

At the post office in Fraser's Hill.

Over the past weekend we have bought Shee Yun's primary school uniforms. Tomorrow will be orientation day and Michelle will be going with her. Michelle is more nervous about it than Shee Yun. Shee Yun is very much looking forward to it.

part 2

Now that I have restarted story-telling with the children, they sometimes ask me to tell them Part 2 of stories that they like. Somehow they expect good stories to be like Hollywood blockbusters - if they do well, they'll get sequels. One such story is the one about Detective Ant, who investigated the case of the Butterfly's missing coin. The suspects were Caterpillar, Spider and Fly. Detective Ant found footprints, but the footprints showed five feet. Eventually Detective Ant discovered that the thief was Fly. When Fly stole into Butterfly's home, he came in from the toilet and accidentally stepped on poo, which stank, so he had to use one foot to cover his nose. The children found this hilarious, so they asked me whether I could tell them another story about Detective Ant the next day. But there is no other such story. This was just a story I built from a silly joke riddle.

Another story I told them about was the Leaky Bucket story. Leaky Bucket always felt bad because by the time its master brought him (and the Perfect Bucket) back from the river, half its water had leaked away. It felt it had not done a good job. Its master asked it to look at the flowers growing on one side of the path. The flowers had grown beautifully and cheered the master, because of the water leaking from the Leaky Bucket. The moral of the story is everyone has differents strengths and different ways to contribute and to help others. The children wanted Part 2 for this story too. This is even harder to make up.

11 Dec 2011. Shee Yun at the Cultural Village at KL Tower.

Shee Yun and Chen Rui.

Chen Rui eats too much tomato sauce. She is willing to eat meat now. To be precise, it's only chicken nuggets that she is willing to eat. She uses a lot of tomato sauce when she eats nuggets. She's eating tomato sauce with nuggets, and not eating nuggets with tomato sauce. She keeps finishing the tomato sauce we put on her plate and keeps asking us to add more. She is sometimes very very slow in eating, sometimes because she is distracted by TV, or she wanders off to play. Once she spent more than 3 hours to eat 4 nuggets, from around 1pm to after 4pm. 晕倒...

art exhibition - bears from around the world

On Sat 24 Dec 2011 we went to Pavilion to see these bears. See this album on Facebook.

然后

晨睿除了“这种”讲成“这hong3”、“刚才”讲成“刚孩”，也把“然后”讲成“拿(na2)后”。

有一天晨睿无端端提起说她很miss kakak，还讲以前她玩plasticine的时候kakak会帮她。我很惊讶她还会记得。都已经那么久了。

2011年12月10日。PJ, Jaya One的圣诞装饰。和煦芸的衣服、拖鞋都很配。

curtsy.

晨睿的粉红色衣服也很配她的粉红色拖鞋。

2011年12月24日。这是在KL Pavillion外面的圣诞树。

Mid Valley的圣诞装饰是以迷宫花园为主题，我喜欢。

自从去Fraser's Hill的时候给孩子们拍照任务，她们现在喜欢拍照了。现在要带两个相机出门。晨睿在看煦芸拍什么。

有的时候晨睿会这样把手伸进自己衣服里。很像“Ah Pek”(阿伯)。

Michelle拍她们的时候我在旁边拍。

小舞台。

这是西洋棋的bishop。

这是Mid Valley The Gardens的圣诞装饰，我觉得反而没什么特别。

在The Gardens有喇叭表演圣诞歌，很不错。

photos - Chen Rui's birthday

Chen Rui is 5 years old now. We are going to try to use this as a justification, or even mandate, to get her to do various things, like starting to learn swimming, starting to learn piano, etc.

Chen Rui specificallyi requested for this cake design.

She also requested for these candles to be used at her birthday when she saw them. So Michelle bought them and kept them until now. But these candles are a nightmare. They burn very quickly and the wax drips onto the cake. By the time we lit the last candle, the first candle lit had mostly burnt out, so we never managed to have all candles lit up at the same time. 中看不中用.

Chen Rui is always slow in doing things. She takes her own sweet time. Michelle often calls her "阿摸". By the time we were done with all the singing, candle blowing and cake cutting, a lot of the surface of the cake had melted. Chen Rui said the cake was not beautiful anymore so she didn't want to eat it. It was a chocolate ice-cream cake with a chocolate cake base, i.e. very very chocolaty. Michelle doesn't like too chocolaty. Shee Yun doesn't want to eat cake (as is usually the case). So I'm the only one eating the cake now. This will be my dessert for the next few days.

Look at her expression.

两只手一起来……